w 



229 
N4^ 






NOTES 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



BY 

EDWARD D. NEILL, 

PRESBYTER OF REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 




"<«£ 



.'"V, 

- 



REPRINTED FROM EPISCOPAL RECORDER. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

1220 s^zrsrsoztyr. s t ir, :e :e t 

1877. 



Extract from Sermon of Pat rich Copland, before the Virginia Company, 
preached at Bow Church, London, Thursday, April 18, 1622. 

" And, that I may bend my speech unto all, seeing so many of the 
Lord's worthies have done worthily in this noble action ; yea, and seeing 
that some of them greatly rejoice in this, that God hath enabled them to 
help forward this glorious work, both with their prayers and with their 
purses, let it be your grief and sorrow to be exempted from the company 
of so many honorable-minded men, and from this noble plantation, tend- 
ing so highly to the advancement of the Gospel, and to the honoring of our 
dread Sovereign, by enlarging of his kingdoms, and adding a fifth crown 
unto his other four: for ' En dat Virginia quintain* is the motto of the 
legal seal of Virginia," 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



CHAPTER I. 



iHAI'I.UX- OF i:Ai:l,'i EXPEDITIONS. 



Edward Marin Wingfield, the President 
dt the First Council of Virginia, make- the 
following statement, relative to tin- firsl 
clergyman who arrived, iu 16(17. with the 
founders of Jamestown : — 

REV. ROBERT HUNT. 

"Fin my first worke, which was to make 
right choice of a spiritual pastor, I appeeled 
to the remembrance of my Lo. of Gaunt., 
hi- Grace, who gave me very gracious 
audience in my request. And the world 
knoweth when I took with me truly a man, 
in my opinion, not any waie to be touched 
with the rebellions humor of a papist spirit, 
iinr blemished with the least suspicion of a 
factious schismatic." 

Tin- appointment of Robert Hon, as 
chaplain of Newport's expedition to Vir- 
ginia came through the direct agencj of 
Richard Hakluyt, Prebend of Westminster, 
who was an earnest advocate for the planting 
of an English colony in America. 

Anderson supposes that he had been a 
rector in Kent, before he received the posi- 
tion of chaplain. Amid all the dissensions 
of the first colonists, he proved hims 
gentle shepherd, and won the respect of all 
classes. President Wingfield speaks of him 
Hows : " Two or threeSunday mornings 
the Indians gave us alarms: by that times 
they were answered, the place about us well 
discovered, and our divine service ended, 
the day was far spent. The preacher did 
ask me if it were my pleasure to have a 



sermon ; he said he was prepared for it. 1 
made answer, thai our men were weary and 
hungry, and that he did see the time of the 
day far spent (for at other times he never 
made such question, but the service finished, 
he began his sermon), and that if it pi 
him, we would spare him till seine other 
time. I never failed to lake such not< 
writing, out of his doctrine as my capacity 
would comprehend, unless some rainy day 
hindered my endeavors." 

On rainy days the place of worship was 
not very comfortable. The congregation 
assembled in fair weather under an old 
sail, suspended from trees, but when ii 
rained service was held in a rotten tent. In 
time the colonists constructed a barn-like 
edifice, with a roof of turf and earth resting 
upon rafters, and in this place, as humble as 
the manger of Bethlehem, Hunt official 
long as lie lived. 

In the winter of 1609 a fire broke out, 
which destroyed Hum's library, and before 
the summer of 1609 he had died, but the 
e time has not been ascertained. 

REV. MR. QliOVEB. 

In June, \. i> 1611, ^ir Thomas Gates 
lefl England on a second voyage to Ywninia. 
William Crashaw, the celebrated d 
father of the poet, says that the Rev. Mr. 
Glover accompanied him, who had been 
" an approved preacher in Bedford and 
Huntingdonshire, a graduate of Cambridge, 
reverenced and respected," but he soon died. 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



Crasbaw writes, " He endured not the sea- 
sickness of the countrey so well as younger 
and stronger bodies; and so, alter zealous 
ami faithful performance of his ministerial! 
dutie, whilest lu- was able, he gave liis soule 
to Christ Jesus ( unilcr whose banner he went 
to fight, and for whose glorious name's 
sake, he undertook the danger) more worthy 
to be accounted a true confessor of Christ 
than hundreds that are canonized in the 
Pope's Marytyrologie." 

ALEXANDER WHITAKER, MINISTER AT 
HENRICO, VIRGINIA, A. D. 1611-1617. 

Crasbaw, the father of the poet, and 
a distinguished divine, in the year 1613, 
alludes to the ministers who had gone to 
America as able and lit men, "all of 
them graduates, allowed preachers, sin- 
gle men, having no pastoral cares, [un- 
charge of children," and exhorts them in 
these words : " Though Satan visibly and 
palpably reigns there, more than in any 
other known place in the world, yet be of 
courage, blessed brethren ; God will tread 
Satan under your feet shortly, and the ages 
to come will eternize your names, as the 
apostles of Virginia." Among these so- 
called apostles, one who came with Sir 
Thomas Dale, in 1611, was Alexander 
Whitaker. He had been comfortably set- 
tled in the north of England for five or six 
years, after graduating at Cambridge, when 
he tore himself away from comforts and 
friends, and " his warm nest," constrained 
by the love of Christ to become a mission- 
ary. He was the son of the great scholar, 
William Whitaker, for many years Profes- 
sor of Divinity, and Master of St. John's 
College, Cambridge, of whom a poet said: 
" He was the shield ol' truth, the scourge of 
error." With his father he held the then 
prevailing opinions of the Church of Eng- 
land. He taught that a bishop and pres- 
byter in the New Testament were of the 
same order, and that the only Apostolical 
Succession was based upon the presentation 
of Scriptural truths. " If," said the elder 
Whitaker, " he is a perfect minister who 



has learned the scriptural doctrine, and ex- 
plained it to the people, then that is a true 
and perfect Church which receives and 
cherishes such doctrine." 

The son had been taught, also, that bap- 
tism purities none, except those who re 
the promise of gratuitous justification in 
Christ, ami that there was nothing like a 
real, express presence in the elements upon 
the Lord's Table. 

But one of Alexauder Whitaker's ser- 
mons was published. In 1613 it was printed 
in London, and contains the following sen- 
tence : — 

" Let not the servants of superstition, that 
think to merit by their good works, go 
beyond us in well-doing, neither let them be 
able to open their mouths against us, ami to 
condemn the religion of our Protestation, 
for want of charitable deeds." 

Sir Thomas Dale had passed many years 
among the Presbyterians of Holland, before 
coming to Virginia. His first wife was a 
relative, and his second wife a sister of Sir 
W. Throckmorton, a man of Puritan affini- 
ties. Many of the settlers at Henrico were 
Dutchmen, and it was to be expected that 
Whitaker's views would be in sympathy 
with Low-Churchmen, the prevailing party 
among the people of England. 

Hamor, the secretary of the Colony, in a 
narrative published in London, in 1615, 
prints a letter of Whitaker's, written in 
June, 1614, which contains the earliest ac- 
count of a church organization among the 
English of North America. He writes : 
" Every Sabbath day we preach in the tore- 
noon, and catechize in the afternoon. Every 
Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas 
Dale's house. Our Church affairs be con- 
sulted on by the Minister and four of the 
most religious men. Once every month we 
have a communion, and once a year a so- 
lemn fast." 

The weekly religious service, or exercise, 
on Saturday night, was a characteristic of 
the Puritans within the Church of England. 
Purchas states that the surplice was not 
even spoken of in Whitaker's parish. The 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



consultation with four of the mosl religious 

liK'i) resembled a Dutch consistory. 

Before June, 1617, Whitaker was drowned, 
and William Wickham, a pious man, with- 

oul Episcopal ordination, c lucted the 

Bervices at Benrico. In 1621 Rev. Jonas 
Stockton took i bai ge oi the parish. 

The unreliable John Smith published a 
letter, purporting to bav b en written by 
tlir Rev. Jonas Stockham, on May 20th, 
1621, which Purchas states was addressed to 
Alexander Whitaker. Alluding to the In- 
dian-, he remarks: "We have senl boys 
among them to Learn their language, but 
they return worse than they went : but I 
am no statesman, nor love I to meddle with 
anything hut my books, but I can find no 
probability by this course to draw them to 
Iness; and 1 am persuaded it' Mars and 
Minerva go hand-in-hand, they will effect 

more l! 1 in one hour, than these verbal 

Mercurians in their lives. And till their 
Priests and Ancients have their throats cut, 
there is DO hope to bring them to conversion." 

'This sentiment, attributed to Stockham, 
we find in almost similar language in a 
letter written on April loth. 1609, by the 
historiographer, Richard Hakluyt, to the 
Virginia Company. His words relative to 
the Indians are, "They be also as uncon- 
itant us t|>e weathercock, and most ready 
to take all occasions to do mischief. They 
are great liars and dissemblers, for which 



faults oftentimes they had their deserved 
payments. And many times they gave 
good testimonies of their great valor and 
resolution. To handle them gently, while 
gentle courses may be found to serve, it 
will be without comparison the best ; but 

atle polishing will not serve, thi 

shall not want hammerers and rough 

■ now — I mean our old soldiers 

trained up in the Netherlands— to square 

and prepare them to our preachers' hands." 

No such letter could have been written 
to Whitaker, as alleged, in 1621, for in 
1617 he was drowned. There was no Rev. 
Jouas Stockham in Virginia, but in 1620 
there arrived, in the " Bona Nova," the 
Rev. Jonas Stockton, about thirty-six years 
of age, with a son Timothy, ten years old, 
and for a time he was minister at Hen 
rico and New Bermudas. 

At the instance of Sir William Throck- 
morton, in 1620, one of the Indian girls 
brought to London by Sir Thomas Dale in 
1616, being weak with consumption, was 
sent to the house of a cousin of Whitaker, 
the Rev. William Gouge, who ''took greal 
pains to comfort her, both in soul and 
body." Gouge was a Cambridge graduate, 
noted for scholarship, oratory, piety and 
philanthropy. He was a member of the 
Westminster Assembly of Divines, and 
died in December, 1653, after a pastorate 
i v-tive years at Black Friars, London. 



CHAPTER II. 



t: '.Y FROM A. Ii. 1619 TO A.l). 1630. 

Hunt. Glovar, and Whitaker had all I commended to honest Sir Thomas Gates by 

been summoni d to the " belter land " before Bishop Ravis, of London, one of the trans- 

the assembling at Jamestown, on July 30th, lators of the King Jam.-' version of the 

1619, of the firsl American legislature. Bible, a pit-late of mildness and liberality. 

He embarked in 1009, in the " Sea Ven- 
UOHABD BUCK, CHAP! CHE " SEA ,„,.,.•■ „.;,,, ( , :lt , , Sn]| „ T . and Cap , aill 

x INI ' l:1 ' Newport, and during a violent storm in the 

Richard Buck, who had been an Oxford last days of July, t h<- ship was wrecked at 

student, was "an able and painful preacher," Bermudas. Here the passengers and sailors 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



remained several months, and Buck was 
faithful in the discharge of his dutii • 

Strachey, Secretary of Virginia, says: — 
During our time of abode upon these 
islands, we had every Sunday two sermons 
preached by our minister, besides every 
morning and evening, at the ringing of a 
bell, we repaired all to public prayer, at 
what time the names of our whole company 
were called, and such as were wanting were 
duly punished." He was occupied while 
there in baptizing, burying, and marrying. 

John Rolfe, whose name has become 
distinguished as the first man who estab- 
lished a tobacco plantation in Virginia, and 
linked with the romance about Pocahontas, 
was, with his white wife, passenger on the 
" Sea Venture." Mrs. Rolfe gave birth to 
a daughter, and on the 4th of February, 
1609— 10, she was christened Bermuda ; 
Strachey and Captain Newport standing as 
" witnesses." After a brief existence the 
child was buried on the Island. 

A ship of seventy tons, named the 
" Deliverance," having been built, in it, and 
a small pinnace, called the " Patience," the 
party left, and iu the latter part of May, 
1610, arrived at Jamestown. Sir Thomas 
Gates, before he unrolled his commission 
and commenced his duties as Governor, 
caused the bell to be rung, and then the 
emaciated and desponding colonists listened 
to the " zealous and sorrowful prayer of Mr. 
Buck." On Sunday, the 10th of June, 
Lord Delaware arrived as Governor Gen- 
eral, and immediately went ashore and 
heard " a sermon made by Mr. Buck." 
The church in which this sermon was 
preached a chronicle of that day described 
as " a homely thing, like a barn set upon 
crutchets, covered with rafts, sedge and 
earth ; so was also the walls." 

Lord Delaware ordered the church to 
be repaired, and when completed it was 
twenty-four by sixty feet in dimensions, 
the pews made of cedar, the communion 
table of black walnut, a baptismal font 
hollowed out of a log like a canoe, and two 
bells on the west gable. 



Every Sunday two sermons were delivered 
by Buck, or Glover, or Whitaker; and the 
Puritan custom of a sermon or lecture on 
Thursday was also observed. During the 
services, if present, Lord Delaware sat in 
the chancel, iu a green velvet chair. Ill 
health soon compelled Delaware to go back 
to England, and then the rude church again 
began to decay. 

Crashaw speaks of all the clergymen who 
left England, as being " single men." If 
this statement is correct, Buck must have 
married some of the female passengers 
wrecked at Bermudas, or some one iu 
Virginia, soon after, for in 1611 there is 
evidence that he was a husband. Toward 
the latter part of that year, in the midst of 
great destitution, his wife bore a daughter, 
which was appropriately named Mara. 
The mother, in her desolation, thought, no 
doubt, of the green hedges and good cheer 
of dear old England, and appreciated the 
language of Naomi, in the Book of Ruth — 
" Call me not Naomi, call me Mara, for 
the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with 
me. I went out full, aud the Lord hath 
brought me home again, empty." 

Three years after Mara's birth the Lord 
gave the wife of Buck a son, which was 
named Gershom. The good man thought 
of Moses, no doubt, who, when, his wife, 
Zipporah, bare him a son, "he called his 
name Gershom, for, he said, I have been a 
stranger in a strange land." 

In the year 1616, the minister's wife 
became the mother of a sou, which proved 
a child of sorrow, and was well called 
Benoni. He did not chuckle and laugh in 
childish glee, he had a vacant stare, and it 
was soon evident that he would not be able 
to measure a yard of cloth, number twenty, 
or rightly name the days of the week, and 
that he, under the English Statute, would 
be called " a natural fool." 

The fourth child was born about the time 
that the first legislature met, and the colony 
was " pelegged," or divided into many 
election precincts, and the boy was named 
Peleg. 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



Mr. Buck died before the year 1624, hut 
the precise time has not been ascertained. 
Ambrose Harmar, who in 1645 was a 
member of the legislature from Jamestowu, 
in a petition presented in 1637, states that 
he had for thirteen years had the care of the 
idiol Benoni Buck, the firsl in the colony, 
and appears t<> have been the guardian of 
the other children. 

B\ Buck's will, his wife had a life 
interest 'in his lands, and after her death 
they were to belong to the children. Hen- 
Lng's Statutes state that the attention of the 
Legislature of March 1654—5 was called to 
the will of Richard Buck, and it was 
decided that his lands descended to his 
children, and not to Bridget Bromficld, late 
wife oi John Burrowes, and that Elizabeth 
Crornpe was to remain in possession. 

Thomas Crompe came to Virginia as 
early as \.j>. 1624. and was a delegate to 
the legislature that met in February, 1631- 
Mnii .lames City. Elizabeth Crompe 
n the daughter of Thomas 
Crompe and Mara Buck, and the grand- 
child of Rev. Richard Buck. 

In 1624 Mara Buck, then unmarried, 
was living with .iolm and Bridget Bur- 
rowes, at James City. Could Bridget Bur- 
rowes have been the widow of Buck, and, 
after the death of Burrowes, could Mr. 
Bromfield have become a third husband? 



<;i;op.<;e keith. 

A minister named George Keith, thirty- 
three years of age. with a wife, and son 
John, aged six year-, in 1617 arrived in the 
ship" George," and settled at Elizabeth City. 
He may have been the same person who was 
tii. firsl minister at the Bermudas, whose 
governor at this time was Daniel Tucker, 
who had been a councillor and prominent 
citizen of Virginia. 

He entered one hundred acres, by patent, 
and lor -ome time a creek in the neighbor- 
hood of Elizabeth City, now Hampton, was 
called Keith's. 

Hi- " ife appears to have dii ^l. L62 1. If 



he was the first minister of Bermudas, he 
was a nonconformist. 

WILLIAM MEASE. 

William Mease came about the time of 
Glover and Buck, remained ten years in 
Virginia, and in 1623 was living in Eng- 
land. 

THOMAS BARGRAVE. 

Thomas Bargrave, who came in 1618, was 
the nephew of Dr. Bargrave, the Dean of 
Canterbury, and came out with his uncle, 
Captain John Bargrave, who spent several 
thousand pounds, with a Mr. Ward, in es- 
tablishing a plantation on the south side of 
the .lames, above Martin Brandon, in the 
district through which inns a creek, to this 
day called Ward's. He probably succeeded 
YVic kham at Henrico, and Whitaker at 
BeritTuThTlTundred. He died in 1621, and 
left his library, valued at one hundred 
marks, or seventy pounds, to the projected 
college at Henrico. 

DAVTD ^ANDS, OR SANDYS. 

(David Sands, or Sandys,) came in the 
"Bona Ventura." in 1620, and firsl dwell 
at John Utie's plantation in Hog Island, 
bul early in 1625 he was at the plantation 
of Captain Samuel Matthews, within the 
precincts of Jamas City. In July, 1624. he 
petitioned for relief from calumny deroga- 
tory to his profession. 

. i > > N \ - STOCKTOH 

Arrived in January, 1621, in the ship 
" Bona Nova," and was about thirty-six 
year- of age. His residence was at Eliza- 
beth City, but for a time he preached at 
Henrico. In January, 1625, he was alive, 
but after this he is not mentioned in an 
the records we have examined. 

Governor Yeardhv, in the -pirn- of 1619, 
found a " poor ruinated church " at Henrico, 
and at Jam' -town " a church built wholly 
at tii, charge of the inhabitants oi that 



8 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



# 



city, of timber, being fifty foot in length 
and twenty foot in breadth.'' 

In 1621 Sir Francis Wyatt became 
Governor, and a number of clergymen 
came to Virginia, but the General Assem- 
bly of 1623 stated that " divers had no 
orders." 

ROB TORT PATJLET. 

Robert Paulet, in July, 1621, was an- 
nounced as one of the Governor's Council, 
and was at that time residing at Martin's 
Hundred. He had been engaged in 1619 
to goto Southampton Hundred, founded by 
Tracy, Throckmorton, Thorp and others, in 
the triple capacity of "preacher, physician, 
and surgeon," and arrived in the mouth of 
December. He never took the oath of 
Councillor. . The Virginia Company of 
Loudon, in a letter dated July 22d, 1622, to 
Governor Wyatt writes, "Mr. Robert Paulet, 
the minister, was he whom the court chose 
to be of the Council ; the adventurers of 
Martin's Hundred desire that he might be 
spared for that office, their business 
requiring his presence continually." • 

ROBERT BOLTOX. 

In the records of the London Company 
is found the following minute : — " Upon the 
Right Honorable the Earl of Southampton's 
recommendations of Mr. Bolton, minister, 
for his honesty and sufficiency in learning, 
and to undertake the care and charge of the 
ministry, the Company have been pleased to 
entertain him for their minister in some 
vacant place in Virginia." 

Mr. Bolton came with Governor Wyatt, 
in October, 1621, and was sent to Elizabeth 
City. He was engaged by the planters of 
the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, 
as their first minister, and preached for two 
years there, and perhaps a longer period. 
He may have been the Robert Bolton who, 
in 1609, took the degree of A. b. at Oxford. 

On November 21st, 1623, Governor 
Wyatt issued the following : — 

" Whereas, it is ordered that Mr. Bol- 
KHi, minister, shall receive for his salary, 



this year, throughout all the plantations at 
the Eastern Shore, ten pounds of tobacco 
and one bushel of corn for every planter 
and tradesman, above the age of sixteen 
years, alive at the crop : these are to require 
Captain William Epps, commander of the 
said plantation, to raise the said ten pounds 
of tobacco and one bushel of corn," etc. 

HAWTE WYATT. 

Hawte Wyatt, named after his maternal 
grandfather, Sir W. Hawte, also came in 
October, 1621, in the same vessel with his 
brother, Gov. Wyatt. On the 16th of July, 
a few days after Bolton's appointment, it was 
signified to the Loudon Company that Sir 
Francis Wyatt's brother, " being a Master of 
Arts, and a good divine, and very willing to 
go with him this present voyage, might be 
entertained and placed as Minister over his 
people, and have the same .allowance to- 
wards the furnishing of himself with necessa- 
ries, as others have had ; and that his wife 
might have her transport free, which motive 
was thought very reasonable," and it was 
ordered that he should have the same allow- 
ance as that which had been granted to Mr. 
Bolton. 

It is probable that the minister's wife 
went back iu the summer of 1623, as a com- 
panion of the Governor's wife, and in 162<> 
he came to England, his father having 
died. Upon his return to England he 
found a great deal of ecclesiastical contro- 
versy, and his sympathies were with the 
Puritans. Opposed to the retrogressions of 
Archbishop Laud, he was arraigned before 
tin' High Commission. On the 3d of Octo- 
ber he became Vicar of Bexley, Kent, the 
seat of his ancestors. He was twice married, 
and on the .".1st. of July, 1638, died. Some of 
his descendants came back to Virginia. An- 
thony Wyatt, one of Governor Berkeley's 
councillors in 1642, may have been his son, 
and perhaps Ralph Wyatt, who married the 
widow of Captain William Button, a gentle- 
man who had received from the Privy Coun- 
cil of England a grant of 7000 acres on 
both sides of the river Appomattox, 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



WILLIAM BEXNETT. 

About the same time, in 1621, that 
Hawte Wyatt came, arrived William Ben- 
nett, in the ship " Sea Flower." He preached 
at the plantation settled under the auspices 
of Edward Bennett, a prominent London 
merchant, in the Warosquoyak district, 
which extended on the south side of James 
river. There is a warrant dated November 
20th, 1623, for collecting of the estate of 
Robert Bennett the salary of William Ben- 
nett for two years. 

His wife came in the " Abigail," in July, 
1622, and shortly after his marriage, toward 
the close of the year 1624, he died. 

On the 22d of January, 1624-5, Catha- 
rine, the widow of the minister, aged twenty- 
four, was residing at Shirley, with William, 
her infant, three weeks old. 

THOMAS WHITE. 

In December, 1621, Thomas White ar- 
rived in the ship Warwick. Governor 
Wyatt and Council, in a letter to the London 
Company, written the next month, uses these 
words : — " The information given you of the 
want of worthy ministers here is very true, 
and therefore we must give you great 
thanks for sending out Mr. Thomas White. 
It is our earnest request that you would be 
pleased to send us out many more learned 
and sine. 'iv ministers, of which there is SO 
great want in so many parts of the country." 

White appears to have died before 1624, 
and his place of residence in the colony has 
not been ascertained. 

WILLIAM LEATE OB LEAKE. 

Humphry Slany, one of the prominent 
merchants of London, at one of the meetings 
of the London Company in 1622, informed 
them that Mr. Leate, a man of " civil and 
I carriage," formerly a preacher in New 
Foundland, was desirous to go to Virginia, 
and would put the Company to no charge, 
exeepf tor necessaries and such books as 
should In- useful to him. A committee 
conferred with him, and asked him to preach 

2 



on a certain Sunday, in the afternoon, on the 
second verse of the 9th chapter of Isaiah, at 
Saint Scythe's Church, which was sur- 
rounded by handsome mansions in Saint 
Swithen's lane, near London Stone. 

He appears to have made a favorable 
impression. In a letter to the colonial 
authorities, the Company write, on 10th of 
July, 1622, O. S.:— "We send over Mr. 
William Leate, a minister recommended 
unto us for sufficiency of learning and 
integrity of life." In less than six months he 
died. Governor Wyatt, the next January, 
wrote : " The little experience we have of 
Mr. Leate made good your commendations 
of him, and his death to us very grievous." 

GREVILLE POOLEY. 

Greville Pooley arrived in the ship 
" James," in 1622, and resided on the south 
side of James river, at Fleur-dieu Hundred, 
one of Governor Yeardley's plantations, 
adjoining Jordan's plantation. 

Samuel Jordan, a few months after 
Pooley 's arrival, died, and the burial ser- 
vice was conducted by the neighboring 
minister. He left a young widow about 
twenty-three years of age, named Cecilia, 
called Siselye, and a daughter Mary, two 
years of age, and Margaret, an infant. 

Pooley asserted that a few days after the 
funeral he courted the widow, and was 
encouraged, but afterward she accepted the 
attentions of William Ferrar, a neighbor, 
and brother of the Deputy Governor of the 
Virginia Company in London. The affair 
caused a great deal of gossip, and Governor 
Wvatt referred Pooley 's complaint of 
breach of promise to the London Company. 
In the Company's Transactions is the follow- 
ing minute, under date of April 21st, 1624 : 
" Papers were read, whereof one containing 
certain examinations touching a difference 
between Mr. Pooley and Mrs. Jordan, 
referred unto the Company here for answer, 
and the Court requested to confer with 
some civilians, and advise what answer was 
fit to be returned in such a case." A few 
months later the Governor of Virginia 



10 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



issued the following order against flirting: 

" Whereas, to the great contempt of the 
majesty of God and ill example to others, 
certain women within this colony have, of 
late, contrary to the laws ecclesiastical of 
the realm of England, contracted them- 
selves to two several men at one time, 
whereby much trouble doth grow between 
parties, and the Governor and Council of 
State much disquieted. To prevent the 
like offense to others hereafter, it is by the 
Governor and Council ordered in Court that 
every minister give notice in his church, to 
his parishioners, that what man or woman 
soever shall use any words or speech tend- 
ing to the contract of marriage, though 
not right and legal, yet so may entangle 
and breed struggle in their consciences, 
shall for the third offense undergo either 
corporal punishment, or other punishment 



by fine or otherwise, according to the guilt 

of the persons so offending." 

Poor Pooley at last found a woman to 
love and be his wife, but in 1629 he and 
his family were massacred by the Indians. 

MR. FEXTON. 

At Elizabeth City, on the 5th of Septem- 
ber, 1624, a Rev. Mr. Fcntou was buried, 
who had recently arrived. 

hi;nry jacob. 
Henry Jacob, the eminent scholar aud 
writer, and founder of the first Independent 
Church in London, was induced to come to 
Virginia, about 1624, aud soon died. It is 
supposed that he may have gone to the 
Puritan plantations of Warasquoyak, 
established by Edward Bennett and other 
London merchauts, aud perhaps succeeded 
William Bennett. 



CHAPTER III. 



CLERGY FROM A.D. 1630 TO A.D. 1660. 



WILLIAM COTTON. 

William Cotton is the second minister re- 
siding on the eastern shore of Chesapeake 
Bay, and may have been the immediate 
successor of Robert Bolton, whom we have 
noticed. It was a law of the colony " that 
whosoever should disparage a minister with- 
out sufficient proof to justify his reports, 
whereby the minds of his parishioners 
might be alienated from him, and his min- 
istry prove the less effectual, should ask the 
minister forgiveness, publicly, iu the con- 
gregation." 

Henry Charlton, who, at the age of nine- 
teen, came in 1623 to Virginia, and was a 
servant of a planter in Accomae, Captain 
•John Wilcocks, one day in 1633 called the 
Rev. Mr. Cotton "a black-coated rascal," 
and it was ordered by the County Court, 
"that Mr. Henry Charlton make a pair of 
-toeks, and sit in them several Sabbath 



days, during divine service, and then ask 
Mr. Cotton's forgiveness for using offensive 
aud slanderous words concerning him." 

Stephen Charlton, who left, on certain 
conditions, property to the Episcopal Church 
in Northampton, or lower Accomae, was 
probably the son of this offender. 

ME. falkxi:i:. 

Mr. Falkner, iu the proceedings of the 
\ nbJy of 1643, is mentioned as the 
rector of the large parish of the Isle of 
Wight county, but we find no further record 
of his life. 

It was not until after the year 1630 that 
the colonists of Virginia began to increase 
in wealth and population. In May, 1630, 
the population of the Colony was reputed 
to be twenty-live hundred. But iu five 
years it had doubled. In 1636 twenty-six 
ships arrived, bringing sixteen hundred 



\ll:<;iNIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



11 



and .-ix immigrants. After this period there 
was some improvement in architecture. 

The Virginia planters, in a document 
written in 1623, state ' that the houses were 
built for use and not for ornament." 
The laboring men's houses in England, to 
which class they gay " We chiefly p 
ourselves to be, are in no nerally, for 

goodness, to be compared ui 

To stimulate improvements, in 16 !8 the 
authorities at Jamestown offered land for a 
house and to any who would build 

a dwelling. 

Iu 1640 twelve houses were built, one of 
brick, owned by Secretary Kemp, and con- 
sidered the "fairest in the Colony," and at 
tli'- same time the first brick church in Vir- 
ginia, twenty-eight by fifty-six feet in size, 
was commenced at Jamestown. Many years 
afterwards, a. p. 1676, it was destroyed by 
fire, and another church, the ruins of which 
are still seen, was erected. 

A levy of tobacco, at the same period, 
was ordered, to repair Point Comfort and 
build a Sta at Jamestown, and Mene- 

fie, sometimes spelled Menify, a prominent 
merchant, was sent to England to dispose of 
the tobacco and procure workmen. 

ANTIIOXY l'ANIOX. 

Anthony Pantou was the most prominent 
of the Virginia clergy, from the beginning 
of the reign of Charles the First until the 
death of Charles the Second. 

At the solicitation of <■ torge Menify, a 
prominent man in Virginia affairs, and 
others, Panton, in in.",:!, came to America. 

Menify had arrived in July, 1623, in the 
ship " Samuel," and became, in a lew years, a 
prosperous merchant of James City corpora- 
tion, and agent for London merchants. 
He lived on a plantation called Littleton, 
between Jamestown and Warwick river, 
and his surroundings were more refined 
than the other colonists, lie was the first 
per, en who raised peach trees in the valley 
of dames river, and gave great attention to 

horticulture. His garden of tun acres was 
full of primroses, sage, marjoram and rose- 



mary, and also contained apple, cherry, pear 
and peach trees. Panton's field of labor 
was in the new plantation of York, aid the 
parish of Chiskiak, created 1639—40 by the 
legislature. 

In 16211 a law relative to the observance 
of the Sabbath was reenacted in these words : 
'That there he an especiall care taken by 
all commanders and others that the people 
doe repaire to their churches on the Sabotb 
day, and to see thai the penalty of one 

pound of tobacco for every tim< 

and fifty pound of tobacco for every month's 
absem e, sett down in the act of the Generall 
Assembly, L623, be levyed, and the delin- 
quents to pay the same, as also to see ill; 
Saboth day be not ordinarily profaned by 
working in any imployments, or by journey- 
ing from place to place." 

About the time of Panton's arrival, in 
view of the scarcity of ministers, the legis- 
lature enacted : " In such places where the 
extent of the care of any mynister is so 
large thai be cannot be present himself on 
theSabotb dayes and other holy dayes, It is 
thought lit!. That they appoynt and allow 
mayntenance for deacons, where any having 
taken orders can be found, for the read 
common prayer in their abseo , 

The Virginians had been indignant at 
the intrusion of Governor Calvert upon one 
of their plantations in Chesapeake bay, 
which had scut a representative to the leg- 
islature at .lamest own, and when one of their 
citizens, of the isle of Kent, had been killed 
in a collision with Maryland -rs, they be- 
came indignant at Governor Harvey's sym- 
pathy with those whom they considi red in- 
truders, and on the 27th of April. 1635, a 
meeting of influential persons was held at 
the York plantations, to adopt measures of 
redress for the many grievances they had 
Buffered from their Governor. The next 
day a meeting of the Council was held at 
Jamestown, and after excited discussion, 
Governor Harvey was arrested for treason, 
and sent over to England. The following 
I ' al a meeting of the king's Privy 

Council, it was charged that one Rabnet, of 



12 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



Maryland, had said that it was lawful and 
meritorious to kill a heretic king, which was 
offered to be proved by one Mr. Williams, 
a minister, but Governor Harvey refused 
his testimony, because he married two per- 
sons without a license. 

Another charge was that he had silenced 
a minister by the name of White. 

To this Governor Harvey answered that 
White, in two years' time, had never shown 
any orders. 

Archbishop Laud, who was present at the 
examination, sustained Harvey, by saying, 
" that no man may be admitted to serve as a 
Minister in any of the King's ships, until he 
has shown his orders to the Bishop of the 
Diocese." 

Harvey was upheld by the King, and re- 
appeared in Jamestown in 1637, with in- 
creased authority, and the increased dislike 
of the Virginians. The Secretary of the 
Colony and warm sympathizer with the 
Governor was Richard Kemp. 

Acting both as accuser and judge, in 
1638, Kemp charged Anthony Pauton, Rec- 
tor of York and Chiskiack, with calling 
him " a jackanapes ; that the King was mis- 
informed, and that he was unfit for the place 
of Secretary, that he was poor and proud, 
with hair-lock tied up with a ribbon as old 
as Paul's," and also that he had preached 
against his pride; upon these charges, Har- 
vey banished the minister for " mutinous, 
rebellious and riotous actions." 

Pauton complained to the King's Privy 
Council. Harvey was soon removed from 
office and his successor, Governor Wyatt, was 
ordered to inquire into the Pauton difficulty. 

Before he could enter upon the examina- 
tion, Kemp, without permission, sailed for 
England, and Thomas Stegg, of Westover, 
an influential merchant, who was once 
Speaker of the Assembly, was fined 50 pounds 
sterling and to be imprisoned during the 
Governor's pleasure, for aiding and assisting 
him to go out of the country, and furnishing 
him with money, because it endangered the 
colonial records, some of which he had 
carried away, and because he exhibited 



contempt toward the Governor in refusing 
to answer Panton's counsel. In April, 
1641, the Privy Council having heard both 
Kemp and Pauton, the sentence against the 
minister was removed. On the 30th of 
October, Anthony Panton, calling himself 
" Clerk and Minister of God's Word in 
Virginia, and Agent of the Church and 
Clergy there," presented a petition to the 
House of Lords, in which he complained of 
the conduct of Governor Harvey, Secretary 
Richard Kemp and others, at whose hands the 
colonists had suffered many arbitrary and 
illegal proceedings, in speedy trial, extor- 
tionate and most cruel oppressions which 
have extended to unjust whippings, cutting 
of ears, fines, confinement of honest men's 
goods, peculation, and the supporting of 
Popery. He also stated that Kemp had 
secretly fled from Virginia, carrying away 
the charter and divers records, and with his 
associates had, by misrepresentations to his 
Majesty relative to Governor Francis 
Wyatt, who had only served under his last 
commission eighteen months, obtained a new 
government and a new charter. 

After the reading of these complaints, it 
was ordered by the House of Lords that the 
new Governor, Sir W. Berkeley, Kt., Rich- 
ard Kemp and Christopher Wormsley be 
stayed their voyage, and forthwith answer 
to the charges of the petitioner. Berkeley's 
commission as Governor had been signed in 
August, but owing to this and other delays 
he did not, before February, 1642, enter 
upon his duties in Virginia. 

JAMES, KNOWLES, AND TOMPSON, PURI- 
TANS. 

While Laud in England was having the 
"Book of Sports" read in the churches, 
and the youth, on Sunday afternoons, were 
encouraged to engage in games and dances, 
and the Court on Sunday evenings were at 
balls, plays, and masquerades, the Virginia 
Legislature, in March, 1643, euaeted : " For 
the better observation of the Saboth, no 
person or persons shall take a voyage upon 
the same, except it be to Church., or for 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



13 



other cause of extreme necessitie, upon the 
penaltie of the forfeiture, for such offence, of 
twenty pounds." 

It had already, in 1629, been ordered 
"that the Saboth day be not ordinarily pro- 
faned by workeing in any imployments." 

The assembly of 164o provided for the 
spiritual independence of the parishes outside 
of James City, by a law, which gave to the 
vestry of a pari.»h and the county commis- 
sioners the right to elect and make choice 
of their ministers, which ministers should 
not be suspended by the Governor, except 
by complaint made by the vestry, and that 
final removal from the parish pulpit was to 
be left to the Legislature. 

In the summer of 1641 the minister of 
the large parish of Upper Norfolk, afterward 
Nansemond county, signified his intention 
to leave. In May, 1642, a letter was written 
and signed by Richard Bennett, Daniel 
Gookin, John Hill, and others, "to the 
pastors and elders of Christ Church in New 
England," which was carried to Boston by 
Philip Bennett, one of the best men of Vir- 
ginia, and contained a request for three 
pastors to occupy parishes which had been 
created by the legislature a few weeks 
before. 

The act was in these words : " For the 
better enabling the inhabitants of this 
colony to the religious worship and service 
of Almighty God, winch is often neglected 
and slackened by the inconvenient and 
remote vastness of parishes, 

"Resolved, That the county of Upper 
Norfolk be divided into three distinct 
parishes, viz't.: one on the south side of 
Nansimum river, from the present glebe to 
luad of said river, on the other side of the 
river the bounds to be limited from Cool- 
ing's Creek, including both sides of the 
creek, upward to the head of the western 
branch, and to be nominated the South 
Parish. 

"It is also thought and confirmed thai 
the east side of Nansimum river, from pre- 
sent glebe downward to the north of said 
river be a peculiar parish, to which the 



glebe and parsonage house that now is 
shall be appropriated and called East Parish. 
The third parish to begin on the west side 
of Nansimum river, to be limited from Cool- 
ing's creek, as aforesaid, and to extend 
downward to the mouth of the river, includ- 
ing all Chuckatuck on both sides, and the 
Ragged Islands, to be known by the West 
Parish." 

The request was prayerfully considered 
by the churches and ministers of Boston 
and vicinity, and three good men offered 
themselves — John Knowles, pastor at 
Watertown, and a ripe scholar from Im- 
manuel, Cambridge ; William Tompson, 
minister at Braintree, who had graduated 
at. Oxford in 1619; and Thomas James, 
for two years the minister at Charlestown, 
and then removed to New Haven. 

Early in 1643 they arrived at James- 
town, bearing a letter of introduction from 
Governor Winthrop to Governor Berkeley. 
They were coldly received, and Thomas 
Harrison, as Chaplain, used his influence 
to have them silenced, and thus prevented 
from preaching in the churches ; but Win- 
throp, in his journal, says, "Though the 
State did silence the ministers because they 
would not conform to the order of England, 
yet the people resorted to them in private 
houses, to hear them." 

Knowles and James returned after a few 
months, but Tompson, of " tall and comely 
presence," remained longer.'' Mather, in 
a commemorative poem, alludes to bis 
success in Virginia — 

"A constellation of great converts there 
Shone round him, and his heavenly glory 

wear ; 
Gookin was one of them ; by Tompson's 

pain-, 
Christ and New England a dear Gookin 

gains." 

Daniel Gookin was the son of the Daniel 
Gookin, of County Cork, Inland, who in 
1621 commenced a plantation at Newport's 
New-, 'flu' father ami SOU were both na- 
tive- of Kent County, England. In 1637 



14 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



Daniel Gookin, St., obtained a grant of 
twenty-five hundred acres upon the branch 
of Nansemond river, and in 1642 he was 
president of the county court there, and one 
of those who invited the ministers from New 
England, ami by Tompson's preaching 
his son Daniel, about twenty-five years old, 
became a member of the Church, and in 
1644 went to Boston to reside. Here he 
became a man of influence, a friend of 
Eliot, the missionary and superintendent of 
Indian affairs. He died in March, 1687, 
aged seventy-five years, and his tombstone 
is still seen in the graveyard at Cambridge. 
Sewall, the Chief Justice of Massachusi tts, 
visited him when dying ; in his diary he calls 
him " a right good man." His descendants 
were very numerous. 

THOMAS IIAKKISON, D.D. 

Thomas Harrison first appears in Vir- 
ginia as the chaplain of Governor Berkeley. 

He was a man of learning, eloquence and 
pathos, and upon his arrival a strict con- 
formist to the Canons and liturgy of the 
Church of England. 

On the loth of April, 1644, there was a 
naval engagement betweeu a ship whose 
captain adhered to the cause of Charles the 
First, and two ships whose officers were in 
sympathy with Parliament. The divisions 
and strifes caused by the civil war iu Eng- 
land had been noticed by the Indians, and 
on the 18th, a black Good Friday in the 
Colonial calendar, the savages suddenly 
swarmed around the feeble settlements in 
the Valley of the James River, and as 
quickly disappeared, with their bauds full 
of reeking scalps. Strong men fainted 
with horror, some mourned and refused to be 
comforted, for their children were not, 
and all felt it was a heavy judgment. 

From this time Harrison was a changed 
man. His sermons became more solemn 
and spiritual. He expressed his regret that, 
while keeping a fair exterior to the minis- 
ters from New England, he had quietly used 
his influence to have them silenced. 

The Act passed by the legislature soon 



after the massacre had his full sympathy, 
anil indicates a reviving of religious lif< . 
It is as follows: — 

" Be it enacted by the Governour, Counsell, 
tin*! Burgesses of this present Grand Assem- 
bly, for God's glory, and the publick beuefitt 
of the Collony, to the end that God might 
avert his heavie judgments that are now 
upon us. That the last Wednesday be sett 
apart for a day of (Fast and humiliation, 
And that it be wholly dedicated to prayers 
and preaching, And because of the scarcity 
of pastors, many ministers having charge of 
two cures, 

"Be it enacted, that such a minister shall 
officiate in one cure upon the last Wednes- 
day of everie month; and in his other upon 
the first Wednesday of the eusuiug month. 
And iu case of haveing three cures, thai hee 
officiate in his third cure upon the second 
Wednesday of the ensuing month, which 
shall be their day of fast ; That the last act, 
made the 11 of January. 1641, concerning 
the ministers preaching iu the forenoon and 
catechiseiiig in the afternoon of every 
Sunday, be revived and stand iu force, 
And in case any minister do faile so to doe, 
That he forfeit 500 pounds of tobaccoe, to be 
disposed of by the vestrey for use of the 
parish." 

The arbitrary and choleric Berkeley dis- 
liked Harrison's changed manner, and 
dismissed him, as too grave a Chaplain. He 
then crossed over to the parishes of Nanse- 
mond, whose ministers he had helped to 
drive away, and preached to the people. 

In October, 1645, the House of Common- 
ordered that there should be liberty of 
conscience, in matters of God's worship, m 
all of the Anieriean plantations. The next 
year Captain Sayle, afterward Governor of 
Carolina, and the venerable Patrick Copland, 
in his youth the friend of Nicholas Ferrar, 
and a preacher before the London Company 
in 1622, of a sermon which was printed 
with the title " Virginia's God be Thanked," 
left Bermudas with a party of sympathizers, 
and sailed to Eleuthera, a small isle of the 
Bahamas group, to establish a colony, 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



15 



uhnv each person was to be at perfect 
liberty to worship a- he pleased, without 
molestation from the State. The >hip in 
which they embarked, when near their 
destination, struck upon a reef, and they 
lost much of their supplies. A- soon as 
possible Captain Sayle built a pinnace, and 
with eight men steered for Virginia, and 
arrived thi re in nine days, and received 
succor from the Nansemond qoucoe 
ists. Finding that Governor Berkeley was 
bitterly opposed to Puritanism, Sayle pro- 
pos d to Harrison that his parishioners 
should cast in their lot with Copland and 
others at Eleuthera, hut the proposition 
was not accepted. 

Among the " Winthrop Papers" thi 
a letter of Harrison, written at Elizabeth 
River, on the 2d of November, 1G4G, and 
sent to Boston by Captain Edward Gibbons, 
" the younger In-other of the house of an 
honorable extraction," in which he writes 
that if the proposition had "found us risen 
up in a posture of removal, there is weight 
and force enough [in yours] to have staked 
us down again." 

After this the Nansemond Puritans, upon 
the express condition that there would be a 
public legal acknowledgment of toleration 
in religion, migrated to Maryland and 
settled 'in the shores of the Chesapeake, 
near Annapolis. Harrison, in the fall of 
111!*, visited Bostou, married a cousin of 
Governor Winthrop, one Dorothy Symonds, 
and returned to England. 

On October 11th, 1649, the < louncil of State 
wrote to Governor Berkeley that they were 
informed by petition of the congregation of 
Nansemond, that their minister, Mr. Harri- 
son, an able man of unblamable con 
tion, had been banished the colony because 
he would not conform to the use of the 
Common Prayer hook, and as he could not be 
ignorant thai the use of it was prohibited 
by Parliame it, he was directed to allow Mr. 
1 larrison to r< turn to the ministry. 

Harrison did not return to America, but 

me < Uriel < 'haplaiu I ( Iromwi 11, 

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in < hrisl 



Church Cathedral, Dublin, he preached a 
sermon on the death of Oliver Cromwell, 
from thetext, Lamentations, chapter v, verse 
16th, which was published with the follow- 
ing title : — 

"Threat Hiberniei; or, Ireland 
pathizing with England and Scotland in a sad 
itationfor the loss of their Josiah. Rep 
resented in a sermon at Christ Church, in 
Dublin, before his Excellency the Lord 
Deputy, with divers of the nobility, gentry 
and commonality there assembled, to celebrate 
a funeral solemnity, upon the death of the 
Luifl Protector, by Dr. Harrison, Chief 
< Iiaplain to his said !'. 

THOMAS HAMPTON. 

Thomas Hampton seems to have been the 
successor of Harrison at Jamestown ; and in 
" Hening's Statutes " he is mentioned as 
consenting, in February, 1645, to the forma- 
tion of a new parish called Harrope, includ- 
ing the Williamsburgh region. At a later 
period Wallingford was also set off from the 
old parish. Upon an old tombstone at 
Williamsburgh Bishop Meade found this 
inscription: — "The Rev. Thomas Hampton, 
Rector of this parish, in 1647." 

ROBERT BRACEWELL. 

Robert Bracewell was elected a buj 
to the Assembly of 1653, but it was orden d 
''that Mr. Robert Bracewell, Clerk, bi sue 
pended, and is not in a capacity of serving 
as a Burgess since, since it was unpresiden- 
tial, and may produce bad consequences." 

The obstacles to bis taking a seat in the 
aturecanni i rtained. John 1 1am- 

mond, for seventeen years a resident ofVir- 
ginia, in 1652 represented tie [sleof Wight 
County in the Assembly, was I from 

that body and the colony, for libel and other 
illegal practices, and then went to Maryland, 
and from thence to England, where he 
appeared :.- a partisan pamphleteer in 
defense of Lord Baltimore and his officers 
in Maryland. 

lua publication i ,;i: d Leah and Rachel," 
which appeared in 1656, and i- reprinted 



16 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLKRGT. 



in the Force Historical Tracts, he writes: 
" But Virginia, savouring Dot handsomely in 
England, very few of good conversation would 
adventure thither, .as thinking it a place 
where the fear of God was not ; yet many 
came, such as wore black coats, and could 
babble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from 
the parishioners, and rather, by their disso- 
luteness, destroy than feed their flocks." 

He continued : " The country was loth 
to be wholly without teachers, and therefore 
rather retain these than to be destitute ; 
yet still endeavors for better in their places, 
which were obtained, and these wolves hi 
sheep's clothing, by their Assemblies were 
questioned, silenced, and some forced to 
depart the country." 

ROGER GREEN. 

In July, 1653, Roger Green, minister of 
Nansemoml, is spoken of as contemplating 
a journey to North Carolina. Francis 
Yeardley this year was a representative 
of Lower Norfolk County in the Legisla- 
ture, and Green probably accompanied his 
brother, Argall Yeardley, this year, in his 
explorations to the Roanoke region. The 
Yeardleys were sons of the former Governor, 
and, as the Nansemond people, were Puri- 
tan in their sympathies. 

PIU LIP MALLORY. 

As early as the year 1644 a Mr. Mai lory 
was rector of Hampton. In Hening's 
Statutes is the following Act of 1656 : — ■" For 
the encouragement of the ministers in the 
country, and that they may be the better 
enabled to attend both public commands 
and their private cures, It is ordered, that 
from henceforth each minister, in his owne 
person, with six other servants of his family, 
shall be free from publique levies, Allwaies 
provided they be examined by Mr. Philip 
Mallory and Mr. John Green, and they do 
certify their abilities to the Governour and 
Councill, who arc to proceed according tot heir 
judgement." The, Assembly of March, 1660- 
61 enacted, " Whereas, Mr. Philip Mallory 
hath been eminently faithful] in the minis- 



try, and very diligent in endeavouring the 
advancement of all those meaues that might 
conduce to the advancement of religion in 
this country, It is ordered, that he be desired 
to undertake the soliciting of our church 
affaires in England, and there be paid him a 
gratuity for the many pains he hath 
alreadie and hereafter is like to take about 
the countrey's business, the sum of eleven 
thousand pounds of tobacco." In 1664 he 
was still rector of Hampton parish. 

SAMUEL COLE. 

About the year 1650, in the absence of 
any vestry, Samuel Cole, Bishop Meade 
says, was appointed minister in one of the 
new counties of the Potomac, by the County 
Court In 1657 Mr. Cole was minister to 
the two parishes in Middh sex County. 

FRANCIS DOUGHTY. 

Francis Doughty is mentioned as having 
preached in Lower Accomac, now North- 
ampton. He was the brother-in-law of 
Willliam Stone, of Hungar's parish, who 
became the first Protestant governor of 
Maryland, and introduced the Puritans of 
Virginia to the shores of the Chesapeake in 
1648, on condition that there was a law 
passed securing liberty of conscience. 

Francis Doughty first lived in New 
England, then went to Long Island, and 
while there used to preach to the English in 
Manhattan, now New York City. His wife 
was the widow of Rev. John Moore. 

After Stone became governor, Doughty 
resided in Maryland, and on Sunday, 
October 12, 1659, visited the Dutch Com- 
missioners from Manhattan, who were dining 
at Philip Calvert's house. 

The only letter extant of John Washing- 
ton is one dated September 30, 1659, in 
which he tells the Governor of Maryland 
that he cannot attend the October Court at 
St. Mary, " because then, God willing, I 
intend to get my young son baptized. All 
of ye company and gossips being already in- 
vited." 



rrscrxu ror/iVTAl. rr.ERGY. 



17 



Perhaps Doughty crossed the Potomac to 
I .i-rtiirin the baptismal act for one of t h«- 
pioneera of Westmoreland, Virginia. 

Doughty's daughter first married Adrian 
Vanderdonk, a graduate of Leyden, a law- 
yer at Manhattan. After his death she be- 
came a wife oi Hugh O'Neal, a planter on 
the Patuxenl River, Maryland. 

The Rev. Mr. Doughty at one time 
preached in Setlingbourne Parish, about ten 
miles from the plantation of John Washing- 
ton, and there is extant a complaint against 



him, presented to the Governor by John 
C'atlett and Humphrey Boothe, for refusing 
to allow them "to communicate in the 
blessed ordinance of the Lord's Supper.'' in 
which the complaiuaute state that Doughty 
is a " nonconformist," and that on a certain 
occasion "he denied the supremacy of the 
king, contrary to the canons of the Church 
of England." A century later one George 
Washington, a relative of one of Doughty's 
parishioners, also denied the supremacy of 
the kino;. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CLERGY PROM A.l). 1660 TO A.D. 1688. 



Virginia, from the death of Oliver Crom- 
well until the accession of William and 
Mary to the throne of England, was largely 
given up to ignorance and riotous living. 
Berkeley was again made Governor in \. i>. 
1660, and retained the position until \. d. 
I «>77. He hated the restraints of religion, 
indulged in profanity, and was the compan- 
ion of I he pleasure-loving Charles the Second. 
Having ejected hundreds of clergymen of 
Puritan sympathies from the pulpits of Eng- 
land, there were many vacancies for strict 
conformists to the Prayer-book, and few de- 
sired to go to the forests of America. I tov- 
erupr Berkeley's dislike of nonconformist 
ministers was also so great that they could 
not live iu Virginia without molestation. 

fo the question of the English Govern- 
ment, propounded in 1671. " what course is 
taken about the instructing the people 
within your Government in the Christian 
religion, and what provision is there made 
for the paying of your ministry '.'" Berke- 
ley bluntly replied, " We have forty- 
right parishes, and our ministers are well 
paid, and by my consent, would be better, 
if they would pray oftenei and preach Less. 
But, as of all other commodities, so, of this, 
tlie wortt are sent u», and we had tew that we 
would ic.L-i of, since the persecution of 

3 



Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy 
men hither. But I thank God there are no 
free schools, nor printing; and I hope we 
shall not have, these hundred years ; for 

learning has brought disobedience, and 

heresy, and sects into the world, and print- 
ing has divulged them and libels against the 
Government." 

With a Governor and clergymen that did 
not command the respect of good men, yel 
laving stress upon the efficacy of it.s ordin- 
ance- of baptism and the Lord's Supper, it 
is not strange that religious people began to 
hold meetings in their own bouses, and place 
a Low estimate upon any kind of ritualism, 
and listen to the preachers of the Society 
of Friends. 

hi 1663, John Porter was expelled from 
the House of Burgesses, because, in the lan- 
guage <.f the Act, he had been " loving to 
the Friends." 

GEORGE WILSON, KKIKNU. 

The itinerant ministry of the Societ] 
of Friends, visiting from plantation to 
plantation, neatly attired, temperate in 
the use of meat and drink, appealing only 
to the New Testament, could but make a 
favorable impression upon the (air-minded ; 
ii stirred up formalists of the Colony, 



18 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



to cause the passage of a law, ordering " that 
all Quakers, for assembling in unlawful as- 
semblages and conventicles, sh:il 1 be lined, 
and pay, each of them there taken, two 
hundred pounds of tobacco." 

George Wilson, a minister of the Society 
of Friends from England, was imprisoned, 
and there is preserved a letter, dated, " From 
that dirty dungeon in James Town, the 17th of 
the Third Month, 1662," in which he writes, 
" If they who visit not such in prison as 
Christ speaks of, shall be punished with 
everlasting destruction, O ! what will ye 
do? or what will become of you, who put us 
into such nasty, stinking prisons as this 
dirty dungeon, where we have not had the 
benefit to do what nature requireth, nor so 
much as air to blow in at the window, but 
close made up with brick and lime?" 

K. G., PERHATS, ROGER GREEN. 

About the time that the Colonial authori- 
ties were holding Friends, in Jamestown 
prison, a small quarto was published in 
London, in 1662, under the signature of R. 
G., entitled " Virginia's Cure ; or an Ad- 
visive Concerning Virginia, Discovering the 
True Ground of that Church's Unhappir 
ness." The writer thereof states that he had 
been for ten years a resident of Virginia, 
and he was, perhaps, Roger Green, who in 
Henry's Statutes is mentioned, in 1653, as 
Minister in Nansemond. R. G., in 1661, had 
returned to England, and in his pamphlet, 
the importance of concentrating the popula- 
tion of Virginia in two, the establishment 
of Fellowship in Oxford and Cambridge, 
for the supply of an educated ministry, and 
the appointment of a Bishop for Virginia, 
are earnestly urged. His representations 
made an impression, and a patent for the 
creation of a Bishop was drawn, and the 
Rev. Alexander Murray was nominated for 
the office, but difficulties arose, and the 
scheme was abandoned. 

Speaking of the members of the Virginia 
Assembly, R. G. writes, they were "usually 
such as went over servants thither, and 
though by time and industry they may have 



attained competent estates, yet, by reason of 
their poor and mean condition, were unskill- 
ful in judging of a good estate, either of 
Church or Commonwealth, or the means of 
procuring it." 

The immodest and immoral poetess, 
Aphra Behn, who lived at this period, in 
one of her plays, alludes to the above state 
of things, by introducing two friends at 
Jamestown, who converse as follows: — 

" Hazard. This unexpected happiness 
o'erjoys ! who could have imagined to have 
found thee in Virginia! 

"Friend. My uncle's dying here left me a 
considerable plantation, * * ; * * but 
pr'ythee what drew thee to this part of the 
new world ? 

" Hazard. Why, faith, ill company, and 
the common vice of the town, gaming. 
I hail rather starve abroad, 
than live pitied and despised at home. 

" Friend. Would he [the new Governor] 
were landed ; we hear he is a noble gentle- 
man. 

" Hazard. He has all the qualities of a 
gentleman; besides, he is nobly born. 

"Friend. This country wants nothing but 
to be peopled with a well-born race, to make 
it one of the best colonies in the world, 
* * * * * but we are ruled by a Council, 
some of which have been, perhaps, trans- 
ported criminals, who having now acquired 
great estates, are now become your Honor, 
and R't. Worshipful, and possess all places." 

MORGAN (JODWYN OR GODWIN. 

Morgan Godwyn came to Virginia after 
the publication, and perhaps was stirred to 
leave his warm nest in England by the 
rending, of R. G.'s pamphlet. He was an 
earnest young student, about twenty years 
of age, when the essay was published, and 
belonged to a family of theologians. His 
great-grandfather was the learned Thomas 
Godwyn, Bishop of Bath and Wells. His 
grandfather, Francis, was the Bishop of 
Hereford, and his father, Morgan, Arch- 
deacon of Shropshire. He entered Oxford 
in 1661, and received, on March 16th, 1664-0, 



viRfilNlA COLONIAL H.KRGY 



I') 



the degree of a. b., and soon after came to 
Virginia. His residence in the Colony was 
not pleasant. He was horrified at the state 
lit' morals, and the abject condition of the 
Africans and Indians, who were treated with 
less consideration than the dogs of a plant- 
er's kennel. Returning to England, after 
sojourning for sometime in the West Indies, 
he engaged in the crusade against slave- 
holders, which a century later was taken up 
by Clarkson and Wilberforce. In 1(580 he 
published a dissertation called " The Negroes' 
and Indians' Advocate suing for their admis- 
sion into the Church, or a Persuasive to the 
instructing and baptizing the Negroes and In- 
dians in our Plantations; showing that as the 
compliance therewith can prejudice no man's 
}USi interest, so the willful and neglectful op- 
posing of it is no less a manifest apostasy 
from the Christian Faith." 

Five years later he preached a discourse 
in Westminster Abbey, exposing the inhu- 
manity of slaveholding, from the text, Jere- 
miah ii, 34. " In thy skirts is found the 
hlood of the souls of the poor innocents : 1 
have not found it l>\ secret search, but upon 
all these." It was printed under the title 
of " Trade preferred before Religion, and 
Christ made to give place to Mammon, repre- 
sented in a ■Sermon relating to Plantations" 

Under his influence, ii is supposed that 
the law was passed by the Virginia Assem- 
bly of 1067, declaring that the baptism of 
slaves did not make them freemen; in order 
that, in the language of the Act, "divers 
masters, freed from this doubt, may more 
carefull) endeavor the propagation of 
Christianity by permitting children, though 
slaves, or those of greater growth, it' capable, 
to be admitted to that sacrament." 

His description of religion in Virginia i- 
startling. He writes " 'flu- ministers are 
most miserably handled by the plebeian 
Juntos, the Vestries, t" » horn the hiring I that 
is the usual word there land admission of min- 
isters is solely left. And there being no law 
obliging them to procure any more than a 
lav reader, to he obtained at a very moder- 
ate rate, they either resolve to have none 



at all, or to reduce them to their own terms." 
In another place he asserts : " Two-thirds of 
the preachers are made up of leaden lay- 
priests of the vestries' ordination, and are 
both the shame and grief of the rightly or- 
dained clergy there." 

THOMAS TEACKLE. 

Thomas Teackle was the son of a royalist, 
who was killed in the war between Charles 
ami the Parliament. He came to Virginia 
in 1656, and settled at Cradock, in lower 
Accomac, now Northampton County. He 
married Margaret, daughter of Robert Nel- 
son, a merchant of London, and remained 
in that county until the day of his death, 
January 26, 1695. His son John, born 
September 2, 1693, married, in 1710, a 
daughter of Arthur Upshur, a gentleman 
whose house was open for Friends' preachers. 
The descendants of this early Virginia cler- 
gyman are wide-spread. The writer values 
the acquaintance of one of them, a lady of 
quiet culture and retiring disposition, one of 
whose parents was a Teackle, of Virginia, 
the other a lineal descendant of a graduate 
of Trinity College. Cambridge, Old Eng- 
land, and an early President of Harvard 
University, at Cambridge, in New England. 

EDMUNDSON, THE FRIEND. 

William Edmundson, once a soldier in 
Cromwell's army, came to the Chesapeake 
with George Fox, the great leader among 
the Society of Friends. While the latter 
visited New England, Edmundson traveled 
in North Carolina and Virginia. In K>7'2 
he visited Governor Berkeley, ami in his 
Journal writes: — 

" As I returned, it was laid upon me to 
visit the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, 
and to -peak with him about Friend-' suf- 
ferings. I went about six miles out of my 
way to speak with him, accompanied by 
William Garrett, an honest, ancient Friend. 
I told the Governor I came from Ireland, 
where hi- brother wa- Lord Lieutenant, 
who was SO kind to our Friend-, and if he 
had any service to his brother, I would 



20 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLBKGr". 



willingly do it ; aud as his brother was 
kind to our Friends in Ireland, I Imped he 
would be so to our Friends in Virginia. 

He was very peevish and brittle, aud 1 
could fasten nothing on him with all the 
soft arguments I could use." 

JOHN CLOUGH Hi: CLDFF. 

John Cluff was one of the ministers de- 
nounced by young Nathaniel Bacon in the 
civil war of 1676, for upholding Governor 
Berkeley. In the year 1680 he was Rector 
of Southwark, in Surry County. 

JOHN PAGE. 

John Page was another clergyman de- 
nounced in 1676 by Bacon. In 1680 he 
had charge of all the churches in Elizabeth 
County. In 1687 he was in New Kent 
County, and in 1719 he was still alive and 
in Elizabeth County. 

MR. WADING. 

When Bacon led the insurgents to 
Gloucester County, a minister named Wad- 
ing refused to acknowledge his authority, 
and encouraged others to follow his exam- 
ple. Bacon placed him under arrest, telling 
him that it was his place to preach in the 
Church and not in the camp. In the Church 
he could say what he pleased, but in the 
camp he was to say no more than what 
should please Bacon, unless he would fight to 
better purpose than he could preach. The 
second in command under Major Laurence 
Smith, during the Bacon insurrection, was 
a minister, wh%; says a chronicler of the 
day, " had laid down the miter, and taken 
up the helmet." 

DUELL PEAD. 

On the 16th of April, 1663, in the West- 
minster Abbey lout, then newly set up, 
Duell Pead, one of the King's scholars, 
about sixteen years of age, was publicly 
baptized. He entered, in 1664, Trinity ( Al- 
lege, Cambridge. Ordained by the Bishop 
of Lincoln, in 1671, he was chaplain of H. 
M. Ship Rupert. In lt>8:J he came to Vir- 



ginia, with Major General Robert Smith, 
remained seven years as a minister in Mid 
dieses County, aud then went back to Eng- 
land, and became minister of St. James,< Ilerk- 
enwell. lie died on the 12th of January, 
1726, and was buried in the parish church- 
yard. He had a son, Duell, a graduate of 
Sidney College, Cambridge, in 1712, who 
became a minister and came to America. 
By the will of the senior Pead, some horses 
ami cows were led to his old (parish in 
Virginia. 

.JOHN CLAYTON. 

Buck, Harrison, Hampton, and God- 
win, have been noticed as ministers at 
Jamestown. By a law of the colony, the 
appointment of a rector for this place was 
made by the Governor. Godwin asserts 
that, with brief intervals, Jamestown for 
twenty years was without a rector. 

About the time that Godwin was pre- 
paring his discourse in England, on "Trade 
before Religion," John Clayton was the 
parson at James City. The following letter 
was addressed by him to the Christian 
philosopher, Robert Boyle : — 

"Virginia, Jamks City, dune 23d, 168-1. 

" Hon. and Worthy Sir, : — In England, 
having perused, among the rest of your 
valuable treatises, that ingenious discourse 
of the Noctaluea, wherein, as I remember, 
you gave an account of several nocturnal 
irradiations; having, therefore, met with 
the relation of a strange account in that 
nature, from very good hands, I presumed 
this might not prove unwelcome, for the 
fuller confirmation of which I have enclosed 
the very paper Col. Digges gave me thereof, 
under his own hand and name, to attest the 
truth, th«' same being likewise asserted to 
me bv Madam Digges, his lady, sister to 

the said Susa \ Sewell, daughter to the 

late Lord Baltimore, lately gone for Eng- 
land, who 1 suppose may give you fuller 
satisfaction of such particulars as you may 
be desirous to be informed of. 

" I cannot but admire the strangeness of 



Virginia coloni \i. clergy 



21 



such ;i complicated spirit of a volatile salt 
and exalted oil, as I deem it bo be, from its 
crepitation and shining flame; how it shall 
transpire through the pores, and not be in- 
flamed by the joint motion and heat of bhe 
body, and afterward so suddenly be acti- 
nated into sparks, by the slacking or burst- 
ing of her coal, raise.-, my wonder. 

"Another thin;:. 1 am confident your 
honor would lie much pleased at the sight 
of a fly we have here, called the fire-fly, 
about the bigness ot'the eantharide- ; its body 
of a dark color, the tail of it a deep yellow 
bv dav, which by night shine- brighter than 
the glow-worm, which bright shining ebbs and 
flows, as if the fly breathed with a bright 
and shining spirit. 1 pulled the tail of the 
fly into several pieces, and every parcel 
thereof would shine for several hours, and 
cast a light around it. 

"Be pleased favorably to interpret thi= 
fond impertinency of a stranger. All your 
(rorks have to the world evidenced your 
goodness, which has encouraged the pre- 
sumption, which is that which bids me hope its 
pardon. It' there be anything in this coun- 
try I may please you in, be pleased to com- 
mand; it will be my ambition to serve you, 
nor shall I scruple to ride two or three 
hundred miles to satisfy any query you 
shall propound. 

•• It' von honor me with your commands, 
you may direct your letters to .Mr. John 
Clayton, parson of James City, Virginia. 

" Your humble servant, and, though un- 
known, your friend, 

"Johs Clayton." 

The writer appears to have returned to 
England and become Rector of Crofton at 
Wakefield in Yorkshire. In .May, 1688, 
he prepared tin- the Royal Society an 
account of his voyage to Virginia, and the 
thing- worthy of observation, which, in 

1708, was published at L Ion. Another 

John Clayton, an eminent botanist and 
physician, when about twentj years of age, 
came in lTuti to Virginia, and in 177:; died, 
aged eigbty-»eveu years. There was also a 



third John Clayton some years before the 
Declaration of Independence, who was 
Attorney-General of the colony. 

WILLIAM 8ELLICK. 

William Sellick was in charge of St. 
Peter's Parish, New Kent, in 1680. 

ROBERT CARK. 

Robert Carr appears to have been 
officiating in New Kent for six years from 
a. i... 1680. 

THOMAS VICARS. 

Thoma< Vicar- came to Virginia about 
1677, and was connected with the parishes 
of Gloucester county for twenty year-. 

JUSTINIAN AYI..MIK. 

Justinian Aylmer, Bishop .Meade states, 
was at Elizabeth City from 1667 to 
1690, a period of twenty-three years, yet his 
name does not appear, in 1680 among the 
Rectors of Virginia. 

JOHN BHEPPARD. 

John Sheppard appears in Middlesex 
county as early as 1668, and in 1680 was in 
charge of Christ's Church parish. Sir 
Henry Chichely was one of hi- parishion- 
ers, 

WINI8TERS 1675 TO 168o. 

In addition to those we have enumerated, 
the following ministers were in Virginia 
between A. I). l()7-5 and 1688, 

Rowland Jones, James City county, a. d. 
1(174 to 1688. 

Paul Williams, Surrey county,A.D. 1680. 

Robert Park, [sle ol Wight county, \- 
n. 1680 

William Efousden, Isle ofWighl county, 
a. i.. 1680. 

John Gregory, Nansemond county, a. i>. 
1680. 

John Wood, Nansemond county, \. i>. 
1680. 

John Laureucc. Warwick county, a. u. 
1680. 



22 



VIRGINIA fol.ONIAI, CI.KRGV 



William Nem, Norfolk county, A. d. 
1680. 

James Porter, Norfolk county, a. i>. 1680. 
Edward Foliott, York county, a. i>. 1680. 



( lharles Davies, Rappahannock county, a. 
d. 1680. 
John Wough, Stafford county, a. d. 1680. 
William Butler, Westmoreland county. 



John Wright, York county, A. n. 1680. A. D. 1680. 



Thomas Taylor, New Kent county, A. ]>. 
1680. 

AVilliam Williams, New Kent county, a. 
d. 1680. 

Michael Zyperius, Gloucester county, A. 
i). 1680. 

John Gwvni, Gloucester county, v. J). 
1680. 



.John Farnefold, Northumberland county, 
a. d. 1680. 

Henry Parker, Accomac county, a. d. 
1680. 

Benjamin Doggett, Lancaster county, a. 
d. 1680. 

Cope D'Oyley, Elizabeth county, a. d. 
1677 to 1687! 



CHAPTER IV. 

LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES BLAIR, D.D., FOUNDER AND FIRST RECTOR OF WILLIAM 

AND MARY COLLEGE. 



After the death of Sir William Berkeley, 
Lord Culpepper, and Lord Howard, of 
Effingham, in succession, acted as Governors 
of Virginia, and, though noblemen in name, 
proved themselves corrupt and avaricious 
in practice. 

During their terms of office there was a 
large accession of Scotchmen to the popula- 
tion of Virginia. Immediately after the 
battle of Bothwell's Bridge a number of 
the hardy insurgents were transported to 
America, and about the same time another 
element not quite so desirable. Luttrell, 
connected with the Government offices of 
London, writes, in his diary, under date of 
November 19th, 1692:— "A ship lay in 
Leith, going for Virginia, on board which 
the magistrates had ordered fifty lewd 
women out of the House of Correction, and 
thirty others who walked the streets after 
ten at night." In addition to exiled soldiers 
and bawd.-, there came, as a foil, men fit to 
mold a State, men of angular manners, 
provincial accent, warm hearts, strong 
minds, and religious principles, whose de- 
scendants yet remain a power in the Com- 
monwealth. 

In the year 1673 James Blair graduated 



at the University of Edinburgh, and in time 
became a Presbyter of the Episcopal Church 
in Scotland, without Episcopal ordination. 
Burnet, once Archbishop of Glasgow, who 
lived in Scotland from a. d. 1643 to 1688, 
asserts: "No bishop in Scotland, during 
my stay in that kingdom, ever did so much 
as desire any of the Presbyter- who went 
over from the Church of Scotland to be re- 
ordained." Blair, for several years was 
rector in the parish of Cranston, in Edin- 
burgh county, but relinquished his office, and 
in 1084 received from the Bishop of Edin- 
burgh, the following certificate: — 

" To all concerned. These are to certify 
and declare that the bearer hereof, Mr. 
James Blair, presbyter, did officiate in the 
service of the Holy Ministry, as Rector in 
the parish of Cranston, in my diocese of 
Edinburgh for several years preceding the 
year 1682, with extreme diligence, care and 
gravity, and did in all the course of his 
ministry behave himself loyally, peaceably 
and canonically ; and that this is the truth, 
I certify by these presents, and subscribed 
with my own hand, the 19th day of August, 
in the year 1684." 

When Blair, in 1685, arrived at James- 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



23 



town, lie found th< social condition the 
\\i<le>t contrast t • » hi< native land, where 
the poorest cottager owned a well-thumbed 
Bible : had reasons for the faith thai was in 
him; and although not clothed "in purple 
and line linen," fell that — 

" The rank is but tin guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gowd for a' that." 

With do schools in the colony, the 
planters had grown up in ignorance, and 
wen tie tools of a few rich land anil slave 
owners, who, in conjunction with the 
Governors, enriched themselves by oppres- 
sive tees and unjust taxation. 

The religion which Blair had learned 
taught him to think of the common people, 
and that his calling as a minister of the 
Gospel would be a failure if their elevation 
was not secured. His policy, and those of 
the oligarchy who came to Virginia to grow 

rich suddenly, did not ham ize, and great 

heat arose from the contrariety. 

When he landed in Virginia he found 
Thomas Teackle, of lower Accomac, James 
Sclater, Duel Bead, Jonathan Saunders, 
Cope D'Oyley, Rowland Jones, and a few 
other clergymen in the Colony, but they 
did not possess the " perfervidam vim Sco- 
toruni " by which he was characterized. 

In liiMMic w a- appoiuted the representa- 
tive of the Bishop of L Ion, with the 

title of Commissary, but with no power to 
i onfirm or ordain. 

ka a Scotchman, he could not rest until 
Bchool-teachere were in the land, and he 
kept up an agitation for a college, both in 
private and public conferences, until he 
overcame the objection that education 
would take planb re off from their mechani- 
cal employments, and make them grow 
too knowing to be obedient and -ubmissive. 
Proceeding to England, on February 8tli, 
1692-93, the charter for William and 
.Mary College was duly signed, and he and 
three other clergymen, John Farnefold, 
Stephen Fouace, who afterwards returned 
to England, and Stephen Gray, were men- 



tioned therein as among the original 
trustees. In the preamble to the statutes 
of the College, published at a very early 
period, in Latin and English, the con- 
dition of Virginia at that time is thus 
stated : — 

"Some few, and very few indeed, of the 
rii her sort sent their children to England 
to be educated, and there, alter many 
dangers from the ,-cas, and enemies, and 
unusual distempers occasioned by the change 
of country and climate, they were often 
taken off by small-pox and other diset 

It was ir w Icr if thi> occasioned a great 

defect of understanding, and all sorts of lit- 
erature, and that it was followed with a new 
generation of men, far short of their fore- 
lathers, which, if they had the good fortune, 
though at ;i very indifferent rate, to read 
and write, had no further commerce with 

the muses, Or learned sciences, but spent 
their life ignobly with the hoe and spade, 
and other employments of an uncultivated 
and unpolished country." 

Blair, upon hi- return, was appoint,, I 
rector of the collegi and turned his 
energies toward the erection of a building 
at the point afterward known as Williams- 
burgh. From this time the number of 
Scotch clergymen increased in the parishes. 
In 1696 there wire ministers with these 
3: Francis Fordyce, John Alexander, 

Christopher Anderson, G ge Robinson, 

Andrew Monro, John Monro, Blair'.- brother- 
in-law, and Andrew Cant, who may have 
bet d the son of Andrew Cant, the Presby- 
terian zealot, who was Professor of Latin, 
and the parish minister of Aberdeen, handed 
down to posterity in the well known lin< — 

" From Dickson, Henderson and Cant, 
Apostles of iln Covenant, 
Almighty God deliver us." 

Andrew, hi- son, entered the Scotch Epis- 
copal Church, in time became the Bishop 
of Glasgow, and in 1728 died. 

The downright earnestness and strong 

convictions of Blair roused opposition anion:; 



24 



VIRGINIA COI.n.VIAI rLERGT. 



the clergy ami politician*. Sir Edmund 
Andres, who was made governor of Vir- 
ginia, after leaving a memory by ii" means 
.in in New England, suspended him 
from thr Council, because <'t' bis alleged 
induct," and the clergy in sympa- 
thy with the governor, opposed him bet 
he ili>l ii"t '-any on affairs in the high ami 
dry way of the old English rectors. 

\ olas Moreau, a minister of French 
parentage, on the 12th of April. ltWT. 
writes to the Bishop of Lichfield: "Your 
ey in these parts are of very ill exam- 
ple : ii" discipline nor canons of the Church 
are observed. The clergj is composed for 
the most part of Scotchmen, people/ indeed, 
so basely educated, or little acquainted with 
the executing of their charge and duty, that 
their lives and conversation are fitter to 
make heathen than Christian-." 

Not long before this letter was written. 
the wife of Commissary Blair was grosslj 
insulted. Philip Ludwell, formerly - 
tary of tin- colony, had married the widow 
..f Sir William Berkeley. By invitation 
Mrs. Blair was accustomed to -it in Lady 
Berkeley's pew in church. Colonel Daniel 
Parke, a gay, violent ami dissipated man, 
hail become much offended at a sermon 
which Eburne, tin rector, had preachedj 
upon the observance of the seventh com- 
mandment, as he had been faithless to his 
marriage vows. One, day in ill humor, 
Parke went to church, and finding Mrs. 
Blair in the pew "I' Ludwell, who was his 
father-in-law, In- rudely pulled her out. 

• Parke hail been appointed by Andros Collector 
..rid Naval Officer fur tin- Lower James River Di«- 
Leavlng two daughters In Virginia, hi was 
wiih 1 he Puke in Marlborough in 17m. ami was the 
Aid Who brought toKngland the news of the victory 
nt Blenheim. 

Queen Vn " Governorol the Leeward 

Islands; he was very unpopular, and on the Tin of 
De< ember, no, was killed by a mob at Antegoa. 

His daughter Lucy married Col. Wm. Byrd, and 
Kanny became ilie wire ol John t'ustis. Collector oi 
Customs In Accomac, a descendant of a Kotterdam 
Inn-keeper. 

The Inscription on bis tombstone Indloatea that 
in- did not have much domestic felicit) 

" lien , under Ibis marble, lies the body ol John 
Cuatls, Esq., ol the oily of WUllamsbi 



A pasquinade printed in v d 1704, is 
very severe upon some of tin clergy. 
Edward l'or.lork i< lampooned at — 

■• The cotquean of the a. 

A doughty elerk ami reverend sag 
Who turns his pulpit to a st 
And barters reformation : 

Rude to his win-, false to his frieud, 
A down in conversation." 

Jacob Ware, who. from 1690 to 1696 
was minist.-r of St. Peter's parish, N- w 
Kent, is portrayed as 

" Well warmed and tit for action ; 
A mongrel parti-colored tool, 
Equally mixed of knave and fool, 
Bv nature prone to faction." 

Ralph Bowker is stigmatized as — 

" A bawling pulpit Elector : 
A. sot, abandoned to his paunch : 
Profane without temptation." 

ri -man Whateley, another of the clergy, 

i- — 

" A tool no pi rsou cau describe ; 
Who sells his conscience for a bribe, 

And slights his benefactors." 

These lines were probably written by on< 

of the friend- of Governor Nicholson, who 
disliked Blair as much as his predecessor, 
- Edmund Ajidros. Nicholson was a 
m in speech and manner. One night, 
while riding, he met the minister, Stephen 
Ft uace, who came into the colony a. p. 1688, 
and ordered bim not to visit a certain 
family. When remonstrance was made, the 
Governor said, excitedly, " When you came 
hither, you had more rags than bags!" The 
reply of the clergyman was: "It was uo 

Bruton; formerly of Hunger Paris) istern 

snore of Virginia, and County ol Northampton, 
aged 7] years, and yet be lived bul 7 years, which 
was the sp.-w. oftlme he kept a bachelor's home, at 
jton, on the Eastei ' Virginia." 

ills son. John Parke i iMo,, married Martha Dan- 
drld b. When a widow. Martha Costls, she mi 
married to ihe jreat George Washington 



\ Ml|,llM\|, i|l 



25 



harm in nave been poor.' The Governor i 
then null' 1 1 1 • and pulled his hat From hie 
head, and asked how he had the impudence 
to ride in his presence with covered bead. 
The dispute between Governor Nichol 
and Blair divided the colony into parties. 
Nicholson wrote to the Borne Governmenl 
mine the Blair faction ; " It thej 



Friends in bis neighborhood in Nan-, mood 
county, one of whom was John Copeland, 
whose ear had been cul off in Boston in 
1658, as a disturber of th 

In \. i>. 1 »>98 there nj »| »-:i red another dis- 
ciple "l l'"x in Virginia, named Thomas 

Story, ;i brother of tin Dean of Li- v . of 

the Church "t' England and Ireland, fully 
innl the power of using tin Scotch way of the equal of Blair in culture, scholarship, 
using the thummikins, or the French way and logical acumen. Toward the close "I 
.if tin rack, or the Barbary way of impal- 1698, o.s.. he held she first Friends' meeting 
ing in' twisting a cord about peoples' heads, at YTorktown. Two days later he was at the 
to make them confess, they would Bcarcely hmi.se of Tin. ma- Cary, in Warwick, who, 

find any to swear up to what they would with hi- wit'e, had lately I" me Friends, 

have them." In another letter he writes of and while visiting there. Mile- Cary and his 
Blair: "He mighl have had a Bort of wife " were made partakers of the heavenly 
spiritual militia, but into whom, m> doubt, visitation.'' 

he would have endeavored to have infused Crossing the James river into Nansemond, 
-■'me worldly principles, as that they mighl he stopped at the house of tin aged Cope- 
havi enjoyed a comfortable terrestrial sub- land, whose singli ear attested what be had 
sistence before they had endeavored to lost and suffered for the faith, in Boston, fort) 
have secured themselves a celestial habita- years before. On the lotl. of tin- Second 
tion." month, 1699, he visited tin Chickahominy 

Blair, in 1705, was relieved of Nichol- village, of eleven wigwams, on Pamunkey 
son's abuse, by his recall ami the appoint- oeck, and then went one mile, to the ha 
meat of Edward Notl a- deputy of Karl of of a -on ■■( tin- distinguished William Clay- 
Orkney, Governor, borne, for many year- secretary of tin- 
By tin- year 1700 a uumber of French Colony. Two week- later he preaches at 
clergymen had been licensed by the the 'house of a Baptist minister in Yorktown, 
Bishop of Loudon to preach in Virginia, and from thence travels t" Pocoson, where 
and we find the names of Mor.au, Boisseau, he found a Is . i elation, and was ent.-r- 
Burtell and Lewis Latane, the ancestor of tained by Thomas Nichols ami wit'e, the 
the esteemed Presbyter of the Reformed latter, he -ay-, in bis journal, "though a 
Episcopal Church who bears the same name, mulatto by extraction, yel nol too tawny 
The inhabitants divided into parties upon for the divine light of tin- Lord Jesus 
questions of public policy, leading to angry Christ." At Kecoughtan, now Hampton, 
discussion and social alienation, many of he tarried with George Walker, whose wife 
the clergy preaching tor the love of money, was the daughter of the one.' noted (Quaker 
rather than constrained by the love of preacher, George Keith. 
Christ, it i> not surprising that plain people A -..oiid visitation was made by Story, in 
n to attach themselves to the Society of a.i>. 1705. On the '20th of the Fourth 
Friends, whose ministers accepted no com- month he was at Williamsburgh, conversing 
pensation, and that not a few in high places with Governor Nicholson upon the reasou- 
, were influenced by their earnest declarations ableness ol "all people that are of opinion 
concerning the love of Christ for sini that thej ought to pay their preachers paj 
Before Blair left the University of Ed in- ing their own, and not exacting pay from 
burgh, Richard Bennett, who had been others who do not employ nor hear them." 
Governor of Virginia, a man of wealth and Two day- afterward he .ailed at the house 
influence, had sympathized with the of Miles Cary, Secretary ol Warwick 



2fi 



VIRGINIA 0O1.0NIAI, Cr.ERGY. 



county. Ou the 5th of tin- Seventh month 
his traveling companion, Joseph Glaister, 
had a discussion with Andrew Monro, a 
Scotch clergyman, at the mansion of Colonel 
Bridges, at the south side of the James 
river. The weather being hot, Monro, who 
was an elderly man, became so faint and 
weary as scarcely to he heard ; at length he 
called for a pipe of tobacco and a tankard 
of ale, and soon, on his part, the discussion 
" ended in drink and smoke." 

Five days afterwards James Burtell, the 
French clergyman, came to the house of 
Thomas Jordan, a county judge, to hold 
a public discussion with Story, as to the 
baptism intended in the words of Jesus 
Christ: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Sou, and of the Holy 
Ghost." 

Burtell affirmed that water baptism only 
was commanded. Story argued that the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost was intended. 
"I grant," said the latter, "the apostles 
could not baptize with the Holy Ghost at 
their own pleasure, when and whom and 
where they would, in their own wills, as your 
ministers can and do administer what they 
call, and have taught you, Christ's baptism; 
but that the apostles could not instrument- 
ally baptize with the Holy Ghost, I 
deny." * * * * At the same time he re- 
ferred to the text, "Go ye into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to every creature. 
He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved ; but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." And that this was not water 
baptism plainly appeareth, for Jesus said : 
" John truly baptizeth with water, but ye 
shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not 
many days hence." 

Story, also, declared that the baptism 
here spoken of was contra-distinguished 
from John's baptism, and could only be 
administered by the power of the Holy 
Ghost, co-working in them, with them, and 
by them. 

These discussions caused the people to 
" search the Scriptures," and those clergy- 



men who did not lay stress upon tin: powet 
' of the Holy Spirit had lint few hearers. 

Blair, amid all of the distractions within 
his own branch of the Church, and the con- 
troversies caused by the presence of Friends' 
preachers, was studious and faithful in his 
sermons. At ;i Convention of the Episco- 
pal clergy, in \.i>. 1710, held at Williams- 
burgh, the question was considered, whether 
the Commissary had ever been Episcopally 
ordained? A majority voted that they had 
no evidence of the feet. The men who 
placed themselves ou record upon this 
point, were I'ownal, Seagood, Emanuel 
done-, Lewis Latane, Bartholomew Yates, 
John Skaife, Hugh Jones, John Worden, 
John Bagge, James Falconer, Alexander 
Scott, and Ralph Bowker. 

Yates was one of the most devoted cler- 
gymen in the Colony. Ordained at Ful- 
ham, by the Bishop of London, in a.d. 1710. 
he arrived in Virginia, and became the 
minister of Christ Church parish, in Mid- 
dlesex county. He was chosen Professor of 
Divinity in William and Mary College, but 
still continued rector of his old parish, until 
July 26th, 1734, the day of his death. Not 
far from the Rappahannock river, in a 
deserted churchyard, is now seen the stone 
over his remains, erected by his parishioners, 
and the inscription thereon states that he 
was a tender husband, indulgent father, 
gentle master, and that " he explained his 
doctrine by his practice, and taught and 
led the way to heaven." 

Lewis Latane, another respected minister, 
came in the < iolony about i he year 1700, 
and for twenty-three years preached in 
South Farnham parish, Essex county. 

Emanuel Jones, of Petworth, Gloucester 
county, arrived the same time as Latan6, 
and was a tutor of the college. 

Skaife, who had been a curate iu Cam- 
bridgeshire and Bedfordshire, came to Vir- 
ginia, in 1708, and for many years had the 
charge of the parish of Strattou Major, in 
King and Queen county, and was one of the 
trustees of the college. 

Bagge had been a curate in the dio- 



VIRGINIA rrtLONIAL CLERGY. 



27 



ee?e of Lismore, and in 170',l came to the 
( Jolony. 

Bugh Jones arrived in Maryland 1698; 
about 1703 was elected Professor of Mathe- 
matics in William and Mary College. In 
1 7"J4 there was published at London a 
duodecimo of one hundred and fifty pages, 
with the title, " The Present State of Vir- 
ginia, and Short View of Maryland and 
North Carolina. By Rev. Hugh Jones, 
\.m.. Chaplain to the Honorable Assembly, 
and late Minister at Jamestown, Virginia." 

The book contains the following descrip- 
tion of the mode of worship during the term 
of Commissary Blair. 

" In several respects the clergy are obliged 
to emit or alter parts of the Liturgy, and 
deviate from the stricl discipline, to avoid 
giving offense, or else to prevent absurdities 
and inconsistencies. Thus surplices disused 
there for a long time in most churches, by 
bad examples, carelessness and indulgence, 
are now beginning to be brought into fash- 
ion, not without difficulty; and in some 
parishes where the people have been used to 
receive the communion in their seats, a 
custom introduced for opportunity for such 
as were inclined tu presbytery to receive the 

sacrament sitting, il is mil SO easj a matter 

to bring them to the Lord's table, decently, 

nil their knee-." 

At the time of this publication, the college 
at Williamsburgh is described as "without 
a chapel, without a scholarship, without a 
statute." On the 28th of June, 1732, the 
College chapel was opened by President 
Blair, preaching a sermon from Proverbs 
xxii, 6. ''Train up a child in the way he 
should go, and when he is old he will nol 
depart from it." A year later the founda 
tinn for the President's house was laid, the 
President and each of the faculty laying 
mie of the first five bricks. 

About the year I7imi the African popu- 
lation began to increase. Gover -Nich- 
olson writes in July of that year, that 
■•-' ■' - were bringing "from twenty-eight 
tu thirty guineas a head," and adds, "I 
believe two thousand would sell." In 1712 



the Governor of Virginia announced that 
one-half of the population capable of bear- 
ing arms was composed of negroes and in- 
dentured servant*. 

In the Legislature of 1722-23 a law 
relative to suffrage was passed, which caused 
some discussion. 

For almost a half century after the set- 
tlement at Jamestown universal suffrage 
prevailed, but in 1653 it was limited to " all 
housekeepers, freeholders, leaseholders or 
tenants," but two years after universal 
suffrage was restored, with the proviso that 
the votes were to be given by subscription 
instead of viva voce, and the Act was pre- 
faced with a preamble stating that the 
Assembly conceived "it something hard 
and unagreeable to reason that any persons 
shall pay taxes and have no votes in elec- 
tion." 

After the restoration of monarchy in 
England, and the return of Sir William 
Berkeley to the governorship, suffrage was 
again restricted to freeholders and house- 
holder-. The preamble of tin- Act of 1670 
is in these words : — 

" Whereas the usual way of choosing bur- 
gesses by the votes of all person.-, who, 
having served their time, are freemen ; who 
having little interest in this country, do 
oftener make tumults at the election, than by 
making choice of Hi persons, and whereas 
the km- of England granl a voice in such 
elections only to such as by their estates, 
real or personal, have interesl enough to tie 
them to the endeavor of the public good ;" 
then followed the restrictive clause, already 
alluded to. 

In a few years the republican feeling was 
strengthened by Bacon and others, and in 
1676 the restrictive clause wa- revoked, and 
universal suffrage again became the law of 
the land. 

Eight yi ars pass, and in T684 it is again 
enacted thai none but freeholder- should 

exercise the right of suffrage. It was uol 
until more than a hundred vr;ir- alter the 
meeting of the first legislative assembly that 
any effort was made io prevent the voting 



IS 



YFRfilNTA COEONIA] CLERGY 



of Indians or free negroes. The Assembly 
of 1722-23, however, enacted that " no free 
negrOj mulatto, or Indian whatsoever shall 
Lave any vote at ihe election of burgesses or 
any other election whatsoever." As required, 
the statutes passed by this Assembly were 
sent over to England for approval by the 
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, 
and they were referred to their attorney, 
Richard West, afterward Lord Chancellor 
of Ireland, for examination. He reported 
adversely to the restrictive suffrage, using 
this language, " I cannot see why one free- 
man should be used worse than another, 
merely upon account of his complexion." 

But, notwithstanding the opinion of the 
jurist, the Commissioners allowed the law 
to exist. When George Mason drew the 
first Declaration of Rights in America, 
which was adopted by the Virginia Conven- 
tion in June, 1776, as part of their first 
Constitution, he reincorporated the idea 
set forth in the Suffrage Law of 165b', that 
it was "something hard and unagreeable to 
reason that any persons shall pay taxes and 
have no votes in election." 

The sixth Article of the Declaration of 
Rights was in these words: — 

"That elections of members to serve as 
representatives of the people in the Legis- 
lature ought to be free, and that all men 
having sufficient evidence of permanent, 
common interest with, and attachment to, 
the community, have the right of suffrage, 
and cannot lie. taxed or deprived of their 
property for public uses without their own 
consent, or that of their representative so 
elected, nor bound by any law to which 



they have not in like manner assented, for 
the common good." 

Amid all the distractions of an active 
life, Commissary Blair found time to pre- 
pare one hundred and seventeen discourses 
on the sermon on the Mount, which were 
first published in London, in five octavo 
volumes. Dr. Doddridge, the Scripture ex- 
positor, pronounced it the best commentary 
on the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of 
Matthew extant, and adds: — 

"He appears to have been a person of 
the utmost candor, and has solicitously 
avoided all unkind and contemptuous re- 
Heetions on his brethren. He has an excel- 
lent way of bringing down criticism to com- 
mon capacities, and has discovered a vast 
knowledge of Scripture, in the application 
of them." A second edition of the work 
appeared in 1740, iu four volumes, with a 
preface by Bishop Waterland. 

George Whitfield, in his Diary, under 
date of 15th of December, 1740, writes : 

"Paid my respects to Mr. Blair, Commis- 
sary of Virginia. His discourse was 
savory, such as tended to the use of edify- 
ing. He received me with joy, asked me 
to preach, and wished my stay were 
longer." 

In 1743, after a ministry in Virginia of 
more than fifty years, he died, having 
proved himself an "emeritus miles," by 
"enduring hardness as a good soldier of 
Christ." 

His son John, lived to see the independ- 
ence of the United States of America, and 
to be. one of the first judges of the Supreme 
Court, appointed by President Washington. 



ViU.INT \ rii[.n\| \ i ri ERG"! 



29 



CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE AND TIMES OF JONATHAN BOUCHER, THE TOR'V ' t/ERGYMAN, A.l>. 1759-1775. 



Jonathan as one of thi 

representati ' :lergy, from 

tin- period Brad- 

dock until 
free and indepi i 

He was born on the . 
at Blencogo, in Cumberland i 
land. While completing his educatio 
mathematics, under the direction of a Rev. 
Mr. Ritson, who lived al Workington, near 
the mouth of the Derwent, he received an 
appointment as private tutor in the family 
of Captain Dixon, who lived on the Rap- 
pahannock river. 

In July, 1759, In- reached hi- destination 
at Port Royal. In his autobiography he 
writes: " Being hospitable, as well as 
wealthy, Captain Dixon's house was much 
resorted to, brri chiefly by toddy-drinking 
company. Port Royal was chiefly in- 
habited by tin-tor- from Scotland, and their 
dependents, and the circumjacent country 
by planters in general, in middling circum- 
stances. There was not a literary man, tor 
aught I could find, nearer than in the 
country I had jusl left, nor were literary 
attainments, beyond merely reading or writ- 
ing, at all in vogue." 

In A.D. 1761, In- was unexpectedly asked 
to enter tie- mini-try. A Rev. Mr. ' riberne, 
who lived on the north side of the Rappa 
bannock, opposite Port Royal, about to 
marry a rich widow in Richmond county, 
resigned hi- parish, and the vestry asked 
him to till the vacancy. He wenl to London, 
was ordained by Bishop Osbaldiston, and in 
.Inly, 1762, became the rector of the parish 
in King George county, and preached at 
Leeds. In le<s than .-i\ months he- was 
called to a parish near Port Royal, in Car 
line county, made vacant by tile death of 
the Rev. Thomas Dawson, Commissar} oi 
Virginia, which he accepted. 

In the spring of 1763 he moved to this 



new field of labor, and remained seven 
year-. Here he established a boarding 

-el I in his own house, and at onetime 

' ad thirty pupils. Among his pupils 

1 ii Parke < lustis, the step -on of 

■o, . "This,' >av- he, " laid 

particular intimacy 

till wi finally 

a our 

taking ■ 

" Mr. Wushii 
sons, of parents distil 
their rank, nor fortune. La 
eldest -on. became a soldier, ami ■. 
the expedition to Carthagena, where, getting 
into some scrape with a brother officer, it 
was -aid he did not acquit himself quite SO 
well as he ought, and so sold out. 

"George, who, lik< most people there- 
abouts at that time, had no other educa- 
tion than reading, writing and accounts, 
which he wa- taught by a convict servant, 
whom his father bought for a schoolmas- 
ter, first set out in the world as Surveyor 
..f Orange County, an appointment of 
about half the value of a Virginia lectin v. 
perhaps £100 a year. 

"When the French made encroachments 
on the Western Frontier, in 1754, this 
Washington was sent out to examine, on, 
the -pot, how far what was alleged was 
true, and to remonstrate on tin occasion. 
He published In- journal, which in Vir- 
ginia, at least, drew on him some ridicule. 
* * * Ai Braddock's defeat, and 

every subsequi ion throughout the 

war, he acquitted himself much in the 
same manner as, in my judgment, he has 
since done, decently, but never greatly. I 
did know Mr. Washington well. * * * 

1 He i- shy, silent, stern, si « and cau- 
tion-. In hi- moral character, he 
is regular, temperate, strictly just and 
honest, and, as I always thought] religious. 



30 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY 



having heretofon been pretty constant, 
mid even exemplary in his attendance on 
public worship in the Church of England. 
Bui lie seems to have nothing generous or 
affectionate in his nature. Just before 
the close of the last war he married the 
widow Custis, and thus came into the pos- 
Hi of her large joiuture. He never 
had any children, and lived yerj much 
like a gentleman, at Mount Vernon, in 
Fairfax County, where the most distin- 
guished part of his character was that he 
was an admirable tanner." 

This estimate of Washington, from a 
Tory, ean now he perused with complacency, 
since the world has long ago declared — 

" He was a man; take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again." 

The French charged that Washington, 
under excitement, tired upou Jumonville, 
the French commander, while he was 
bearing a flag of truce. De Villiers, in 
his report of Washington's surrender at 
Fort Necessity, wrote : — 

"We made the English consent to sign 
that they had assassinated my brother." In 
the articles of agreement it is so written. 
In 1756, these facts were brought to light 
by William Livingston, of New Jersey, 
and no doubt caused some criticism and 
ridicule of Washington. 

Boucher, in one of his sermons, give> a 
picture of the bald and desolate appear- 
ance of the parish churches at the period 
of the Revolution. He remarks: "Our 
churches in general are ordinary and mean 
buildings, composed of wood, without 
-piles or towers, or Steeples or bells, and 
placed, for the most part, like those of our 
remotest ancestors in Great Britain, in 
retired and solitary spots, and contiguous 
to spring- or wells. Within them, there 
is rarely even an attempt, to introduce any 
..liniments; it is almost as uncommon to 
find a church that has any communion 
plate, as it is in England to lind one that 
has not; in both Virginia and Maryland, 



there are not six organ-; tin Psalmody is 
everywhere ordinary and mean, and in 
not a few places there is none." 

Unlike Blair, he had no sympathy, with 
Whitfield and his followers. Davies, more 
than his equal in eloquence, scholarship and 
spirituality, afterward President of Prince- 
ton, he looked down upou as a common dis- 
senter. He used every mean- to prevent 
the growth of nonconformity, and in one of 
his sermons regrets it< increase, and stated 
that thirty years ago there was not a dis- 
senting congregation in Virginia, while 
then there were eleven ministers, and each 
with from two to four congregations. 

In his autobiography he remarks, " I 
attributed much of my success in this (keep- 
ing down nonconformists),. to my avoiding 
all disputation with their ministers, whom 
I spoke of as beneath such condescension, on 
the score of their ignorance and their impu- 
dence. And when one of them publicly chal- 
lenged me to a public debate, I declined it, but 
at the same time set up one Daniel Bark-dale, 
a carpenter in my parish, who had a good 
front, and. a voluble tongue, and whom, 
therefore, f easily qualified to defeat his op- 
ponent, as he effectually did. And I am 
still persuaded that this method, of treating 
the preachers with well-judged ridicule and 
contempt, and their followers with gentle- 
ness, persuasion, aud attention, is a good 
one." 

I poii I he subjeel of African shivery, 
he held the views of Henry, Jefferson and 
Washington. Destituteof moral cowardice, 
in 1701! he preached a sermon, in which he 
remarked — 

"Were an impartial and comprehensive 
observer of the state of society in these 
Middle Colonies asked whence it happened 
that Virginia and Maryland, which were the 
first planted, and are superior to many colo- 
nies, ami inferior to none in point of every 
natural advantage, are still SO exceedingly 
behind most of i he other British Ameri- 
can Provinces, in all those improvements 
which bring credit and consequence to a 
country? he would answer: They are 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



31 



66, because they arc cultivated by slaves. 
i believe it is capable of demonstration, 
that except the money interest which ever) 
man has in the property of his slaves, it 
would be for every man's interest that 
there were uo slaves, and for this plain 
reason, because the free labor of a fr© 
man, who is regularly hind and paid for 
the wink which he dor-, is in the end 
cheaper than the extorted eye-service of a 
slave. Some los^ and inconvenience would 
uo doubt arise from the general abolition 
of slavery in the Colonics, but were it done 
gradually, with judgment and good tem- 
per, I have never yet seen it satisfactorily 
proved that such injury would be either 
great or lasting." 

During Boucher's residence in Caroline 
County, he manifested an interest for the 
slave-, and on the 31st of March, 1766, 
Easter Monday, baptized three hundred 
and thirteen negro adults, and preached to 
upwards of a thousand. He, moreover, 
employed two or three intelligent blacks 
to teach the children on Sunday afternoons. 
In time, twenty or thirty were able to use 
the Prayer-book at the Sunday services, 
and thirteen became communicants. 

Calm and fearless iu manner, logical 
and intellectual in his discourses, he suc- 
ceeded iu obtaining the entire respect of 
the planters among whom he resided. In 
one of his sermons he states that " he had 
lived among them more than seven years, 
as minister, in such harmony as to have 
had no disagreement with any man, even 
for a day." While in Virginia, he was inti- 
mate with the Rev. dame- Maury or Marye, 
a clergyman, of French parentage, born at 
Sea, trained iu England, educated in 
America, and settled in Albemarle county. 
At Maury's request, he wrote a poem, which 
was well received, "ii the dispute between 
the Clergy and the Assembly of Virginia, j 
relative to the injustice of the act allowing 
two pence a pound to be paid instead of the 
16,000 pounds of tobacco in kind, due as 
salary of a parish minister. 

In 1770, he left Virginia, to become 



Rector of the church at Annapolis, the 
capital of Maryland, ami took with him his 
pupil, John Parke Custis, the step-son of 
Washington. 

The State House now used by the legisla- 
ture of Maryland had not then been erected, 
and the church edifice was in a dilapidated 
condition, while the town boasted a hand- 

- e theater, in which Hallam and others 

played, built on land owned by the church. 
To stimulate his parishioners to the erection 

of a new church, he published, s i after he 

became the Rector of St. Anne's, in the 
Maryland Gazette, a poetical epistle, ad- 
1 1 n sssed : — 

" To the very worthy and respectable inhabit- 
ants of Annapolis, the humble petition of 
the old Church sheweth : — " 

A portion of this effusion is as follows: 

" That late iu Century the last, 
By private bounty, here were placed 
My sacred walls, and tho' in truth 
Their stile and manner be uncouth, 
Yet whilst no structure met nunc eye 
That even with myself could vie, 
A goodly edifice, I seemed, 
And pride of all St. Anne's was deemed. 
How changed the times ! for now all round 
Unnumbered stately piles abound. 
All better built and looking down 
On one quite antiquated grown : 
Left unrepaired, to time a prey, 
I feel my vitals fast decay ; 
And often have I heard it said 
That -nine good people are afraid 
Lest I should tumble, on their bead, 
Of which, indeed, thi- seems a proof, 
They seldom come beneath my roof. 

Here in Annapolis, alone, 
God has the meanest house in town. 
The premises considered, I, 
With humble confidence, rely, 
That. Phoenix like, I soon shall rise, 
From my own ashes, to the skies ; 
Your mite, at least, that you will pay, 
And your petitioner shall praj 



32 



Virginia colonial ci.kkgy. 



While residing in Annapolis he deter- 
mined tn know something besides "Jesus 
Christand Him crucified." He became much 
absorbed in the social, literary and political 
pursuits of tlic community. He wrote 
si line verses nn an actress, and a prologue 
for the theater, and was made first Pre- 
sident nf the Hominy Club, a society 

formed to promote in sent mirth. He 

was recognized as Governor Eden's right 
hand man and most intimate friend. He 
says: "1 was, in fact, the must efiicient 
person in the administration of Govern- 
ment. The management of bhe Assembly 
was left very much to me, and hardK a 
Bill was brought in which I did nol either 
draw, or at least revise." The Governor's 
speeches, messages and other important 
paper- were also from his pen. In the 
defense of what he supposed were the 

rights of the Maryland clergy, he had a 
sharp controversy with two lawyers, Wil- 
liam Paca and Samuel Chase, both of 
whom, in 1776, were in the Continental 
Congress, and signers of the Declaration. 
Paca, smarting under some remark, was 
disposed to fight a duel with the rector of 
St. Anne's, but was quieted by the gentle- 
man whom he consulted as his second. 

( ioyernor Eden, who valued his talent sand 
friendship, in 1772 offered him the lower 
church of Queen Anne's Parish, Prince 
George county, Md., which he accepted. 
About this time he was married to a Miss 
Addison, a native of this county, niece of the 
Rev. Henry Addison, educated at Queen's 
College, Oxford, daughter of Thomas Addi- 
son, and grandchild of John Addison, Sur- 
veyor-General of the Province of Maryland. 

His controversy with the lawyers, Paca 
and Chase, gave him a reputation among 
the Episcopal clergy of New York and 
New England, and King's College, now 
Columbia, in New York city, conferred 
upon him the degree of Master of Arts. 
The Rev. Dr. Cooper, President of King's 
College, visited him, and in company they 
proceeded to the residence of Rev. Dr. 
Smith, Provost of the College of Philadel- 



phia, to concert measures to support the 
Mother Country in the pending controver- 
sies. " It is too well known," he says, 
" how little the clergy of Philadelphia re- 
garded this agreement." 

The ancestral residence of his wife's 
family was at Oxon Hall, nearly opposite 
Alexandria. In his reminiscences he writes : 

" 1 happened to be going across the Poto- 
mac with my wife and some other of our 
friends, exactly at the time that General 
Washington was crossing it on his way to 
the northward, whither he was going to 
take command of the Continental army. 
There had been a great meeting of people, 
and great doings in Alexandria on the oc- 
casion ; and everybody seemed to be on fire, 
either with rum or patriotism, or both. 
Some patriots in our boat huzzaed, and 
gave three cheers to the General as he 
passed us, whila Mr. Addison and myself 
contented ourselves with pulling off our 
hats. Then General (then only Colonel ) 
Washington beckoned us to stop, as we did, 
just to shake us by the hand, he said. 

" His behavior to me was now, as it had 
always been, polite and respectful, and 1 
shall forever remember what passed in the 
few disturbed moments of conversation we 
then had. From his going on his present 
errand, I foresaw and apprised him ot much 
that has since happened ; in particular, 
that there would certainly then be a civil 
war, and that the Americans would soon 
declare for independency. With more earn- 
estness than was usual with his great re- 
serve, he scouted my apprehensions, adding, 
and I believe with perfect sincerity, that if 
ever I heard of his joining in such measure.-, 
I had his leave to set him down for every- 
thing wicked. * * This was the 
last time I ever saw this gentleman, who, 
contrary to all reasonable expectation, has 
since so distinguished himself, that he will 
probably be handed down to posterity as 
one of the first characters of the age." 

From this period, party feeling deepened 
in Maryland, and Boucher thought it pru- 
dent to leave his residence in the lower 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



33 



parish of Prince George county, and he re- 
moved to the "Lodg§," the borne of Rev. 
Heury Addison, his wife's uncle, in the 

upper part of the county. During his 
absence, services were held by his curate, a 
Republican, a brother of Robert Hanson 
Harrison, one of Washington's aids. He 
became increasingly unpopular, and when- 
ever he preached there was more or less 
disapprobation. "For more than six 
months" lie writes, " I preached, when I did 
preach, with a pair of loaded pistols lying 
on the cushion, having given notice that if 
any man or body of men could possibly be 
so Inst to all sense of decency and propriety 
as to drag me out of my own pulpit, I 
should think myself justified before God 
and man in repelling violence." 

In 1775 the Republican authorities set 
apart Thursday, the 11th day of May, for 
prayer aud fasting, and Mr. Boucher an- 
nounced that he would preach in his own 
pulpit. The text he had chosen was from 
Nehemiah vi, 10, 11: ''Afterward I came 
unto the house of Shemaiah, the son of 
Delaiah, the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut 
up ; and lie said, let us meet together in 
the house of God, within the temple, and 
let us shut the doors of the temple, for they 
will come to slay thee; yea, in the night 
will they come to slay thee. And I said, 
should such a man as I flee? and who is 
there that, being as I am, would go into the 
temple to save his life? I will not go in." 

Fifteen minutes before the time of service 
he arrived at the church, but found the 
Republican curate, Harrison, already in the 
desk, and a crowd of armed men around the 
church. A Mr. Osborne Sprigg, who was 
the leader, told him that they did not wish 
him to preach. He replied that they would 
have, then, to take away his life; and with 
MTinon in one hand, and a loaded pistol in 
the other, moved toward the pulpit, bul was 
instantly surrounded by excited men. 
Seizing Sprigg by the collar of his coat, and 
with cocked pistol, he told him he would 
blow his brains out if any of the crowd 
should dare attack him. The crowd, while 



not injuring him, forced him out of the 
church, and escorted him to his residence, a 
fifer playing the tune of the "Rogue's March." 
Fearless and persevering, he appeared at the 
church next Sunday, and, amid much con- 
fusion, preached the sermon he had pre- 
pared for " Fast-day." 

From this time his feelings were embit- 
tered against the Republicans, and on the 
16th of August, 1775, he wrote, under 
excitement, a long letter to Washington, 
which he concludes in these words : — 

" I have, at least, the merit of consist- 
ency; aud neither in any private or public 
conversation, in anything I have written, 
nor in anything that I have delivered from 
the pulpit, have I ever asserted any other 
opinions or doctrines than you have repeat- 
edly heard me assert, both in my own bouse 
and yours. You cannot say that I deserved 
to be run down, villified, and injured in the 
manner which you know has fallen to my 
lot, merely because I cannot bring myself 
to think, on some political points, just as 
you and your party would have me think. 
And yet you have borne to look on, at 
least as an unconcerned spectator, if not 
an abetter, whilst, like the poor frogs in the 
fable, I have in a manner been pelted to 
death. I do not ask if such conduct in you 
Was friendly; was it either, just, manly, 
or generous? It was not; no, it was act- 
ing with all the base malignity of a virulent 
Whig. As such, Sir, I resent it ; and 
oppressed and overborne asl may seem to be, 
by popular obloquy, I will not be so want- 
ing in justice to myself as not to tell you, 
as I now do, with honest boldness, that I 
despise the man who, for any motives, 
could be induced to act so mean a part. 
You are no longer worthy of my friend- 
ship; a man of honor can no longer, with- 
out dishonor, be connected with you. With 
your cause, I renounce you." 

In this frame of mind, he became odious 
to the friends of Congress, and in a month 
was a refugee. 

On the 10th of September, with bis wife 
and her uncle, the Rev. Henry Addison, 



34 



VIRGINIA COLONIAL CLERGY. 



and his son, lie went on board a small 
schooner, the Nell Gwynn, and, sailing 
down the Potomac, entered the Chesapeake, 
and was taken aboard a vessel, which, on 
the 20th of October, reached Dover, in 
England. For nineteen years he was 
Vicar of Epsom, and devoted much time to 
philological studies. He died, a.d. 1804, 
at the age of sixty-six years. His engraved 
portrait shows a firm, benevolent, round- 
faced man, with expansive forehead. 

In 1797 he published " A View of the 
Causes and Consequences of the American 
Revolution," which he gracefully dedicated 
as a kind of peace offering to his old friend, 
who had been the first president of the 
United States of America. Washington, in 
reply to the compliment, in a letter from 
Mount Vernon, dated 15th of August, 1798, 
wrote, " For the honor of its dedication and 
for the friendly and favorable sentiments 
therein expressed, I pray you to accept 
my acknowledgment and thanks. Not 
having read the book, it follows, of 
course, that I can express no opinion with 
resj>ect to its political contents, but I can 
venture to assert beforehand, and with con- 
fidence, that there is no man in either 
country more zealously devoted to peace and 
a good understanding between the nations 
than I am : no one who is more disposed to 
bury in oblivion all animosities which have 
subsisted between them and the individuals 
of each." 

He was married three times. His first 
wife, Miss Addison, noted for her beauty, 
had no children, neither had the second. 
By his third wife he had several children, 
one of whom was the Rev. Barton Boucher, 
of Wiltshire. It was not until 1871 his 



last child, a daughter, died. One of his 
grandsons, bearing his name, is a valued 
contributor to the London Notes and Que- 
ries, and to him we are indebted for extracts 
from his grandfather's journals. 

In concluding this article, a brief refer- 
ence will not be out of place, to Rev. Walter 
Dulaney Addison, who became Rector of the 
parish from which his uncle had been 
ejected a few months before the Declaration 
of Independence. He was the son of Thomas 
Addison, whose wife was Rebecca Dulaney, 
of Annapolis; and also the nephew of the 
wife of Jonathan Boucher. In 1788, while 
on a visit to his uncle, by marriage, in Eng- 
land, Mr. Boucher requested him to make a 
catalogue of his library. In doing this, he 
fell from a ladder while examining some 
books on a high shelf, and was much injured. 
While confined to his room he became very 
serious, and determined to enter the ministry. 
Returning to this country he married a Miss 
Hesselius, of Annapolis, and theu went to 
reside with his mother at Oxon Hall, on the 
Potomac. For several years he occupied 
the same pulpits which Jonathan Boucher 
had preached from in Prince George county, 
and formed a wide contrast to his relative in 
his views of religiou. With what was con- 
sidered Puritanic strictness, he frowned upon 
duelling, horse racing, card playing, and 
theater-going. While attached to the liturgy 
ot his Church, he maintained friendly rela- 
tions with those whom he recognized as min- 
isters of other branches of the Church. For 
many years he was deprived of sight. God 
took him, in 1848, ripe in age, and fit for 
heaven. His friends deposited his remains 
in the burial place of his ancestors, at Oxon 
Hall. 



FIN 18. 



A PLAINT 

OF SAMUEL PURCHAS, RECTOR OF ST. MARTIN'S, LUDGATE, LONDON, A.D., 1625. 



" My prayers shall be to the Almighty for Virginia's prosperity, whose dwarfish growth 
after so many years' convulsions by dissensions, Tantalean starvings amidst rich maga- 
zines and fertilities, subversion here and self eversion there (perverseness I mention not), 
rather than conversion of savages, after so many learned and holy men sent there ; 
poverty, sickness, death in such a soil and healthful climate — what shall I say ? 

" I can deplore, I do not much admire, that we have had so much in Virginia, yet 
so little ; the promises as probable as large, and yet the premises yielding, in the con- 
clusion, this Virginian sterility and meagerness, rather than the multiplied issue and 
thrift of a worthy nation, and mother of a family answering to her great inheritance. 
But what do I in plaints, when some, perhaps, will complain of my complainings ?" 



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